The Greatest Songwriter Never Known

By Tom Franks

Washed-up songwriter, Gordon Thomson has unfinished business. Having ghost-written some of the biggest hits of the 1980’s, heis entering middle-age, feeling short-changed. Unlucky in love, suffering from writer’s block and resigned to playing cover versions in pubs and clubs.

A chance radio airing of one of his songs provides his inspiration to re-visit and record material written years earlier. In order to do so, however, Gordon must first reclaim a folder containing his life’s work, from his estranged former mentor, Tavish Goldberg. A challenge compounded by a mild developmental disorder.

Presenting as slightly eccentric, Gordon finds social interaction and relationships challenging, and perennially struggles to process past events - the tragic passing of his first love and unresolved issues surrounding his only other romantic involvement.

To retrieve his folder, Gordon enlists the help of his outrageous, cross-dressing, friend, Martin and Goldberg’s ex-wife, the uber-cool Debby. Together, they hatch a hastily conceived, hare-brained plan to nab the songbook from under Goldberg’s nose.

We are taken on mad-cap adventure, charting Gordon’s journey from awkward student to his chance meeting with Goldberg, time spent in the glitz of Los Angeles, and his unfortunate withdrawal from song writing. Then, fast-forward to follow Gordon and his eclectic group of friends in a hilarious, convoluted attempt to reclaim his life’s work.

Packed with oddball characters – the unscrupulous Goldberg, Gordon’s neurotic former co-writer, Benny Elfstein - ‘The Greatest Songwriter Never Known’ is an off-beat farce, that delivers a shot in the arm for every underdog or perceived misfit.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Tom Franks
• Release date: May 16, 2019
• ISBN: 9781916112711

Book preview

A-SIDE THE GOLDBERG YEARS

1

IF TOMORROW NEVER COMES

November 1979

‘A little piece of shamayim,’ she would call it, as she strolled hand in hand through the grounds with her best friend, her soul mate, her one and only love. It was Zoe van Dijk’s favourite spot in the whole world. Sandwiched discreetly between West Brompton tube station and Stamford Bridge stadium, and sheltered from the peripheral urban chaos, the small Jewish section of Brompton Cemetery remains to this day a purposefully inconspicuous sanctuary known to few, save for those who need to know of its existence. Nowhere was more spiritual or special to the devoted young couple.

And as she aimlessly dawdled her way along the immaculately maintained footpaths on her way home from school, she often daydreamed about the lives of those interred and liked to imagine that their spirits were looking down on her from a peaceful, eternal nirvana. She would stop, time and time again, to read the inscriptions, out of genuine curiosity and respect for those who had perished. Every headstone conveying a concise, final footnote on life and death. Some passing away from nothing more than the curse of old age, others from typhoid or an equally wretched disease. And some, whose families were fortunate enough, if there is favour in death, to have their loved ones’ remains returned, rather than shovelled into a makeshift, unmarked grave on foreign soil, having made the ultimate sacrifice for king or queen and country.

As and when it took her to stop at a certain plot, she would gently and coyly bow her head and whisper the name or some detail about the person who lay beneath. ‘Aaron Solomon, died 1827’, ‘Fanny Brunswick, nee Meyer, died June 1893’, ‘Samuel Reubens, died in action, Crimea, December 1855,’ or ‘Wolfe, Elizabeth, married name, died June 1852’. Often, she would offer up a tender, delicate smile or occasionally a tear, depending on whether she considered the deceased to have had a long and fulfilled life or one cut tragically short by unfathomable fate. Little did she realize, during her almost daily ritual of wandering among the mix of newly polished and crumbling old headstones, floral tributes and kept lawns, that she would cruelly end up among them far too soon.

Her own extended family were not buried there. The more recently deceased either lay in the traditional Jewish stronghold of North London or in Amsterdam, from where Zoe’s father had emigrated in 1956. Unlike many Dutch Jews who were Ashkenazi and emigrated to the Netherlands from Eastern Europe via the Rhineland, the van Dijk’s were Sephardic Jews originally from Iberia. Rosas was the family’s original name but, like so many others around the globe, they’d adopted a homogeneous name as a means of social acceptability, or in an attempt to hide from the ever-constant threat of bigoted recrimination.

Zoe’s forbearer’s had escaped the brutal Spanish Inquisition and settled in the beautiful old city of Nijmegen, before a later generation moved on to the commercial hub of Amsterdam. Other than being a romantic story to hand down to her children, her heritage mattered little to Zoe van Dijk, but it did account for her olive skin, thick, shiny crow-black hair, delicate bone structure and intoxicating, dark chocolate eyes. According to her beloved Gordon she was the most beautiful woman in all of London, and with her fine features, carefree spirit, natural poise and inner calm, she may well have been.

She was born in London, three days before Gordon in April 1960, a week after Passover. Not that her parents were especially religiously observant. Her Jewishness bore more of a cultural attachment. She would have been nineteen and no doubt studying medicine somewhere; most probably at UCL where she could be close to Gordon.

They had met, as true lovers often do, in obscure, random circumstances. The understated, handsome, introverted and shy seventeen-year-old boy, who unknowingly turned girls’ (and older women’s) heads with his impeccable manners, porcelain skin and an aura of distant cool most teenagers strive for but never quite achieve. And her, the consummate high-achieving schoolgirl from a sheltered, middle-class upbringing.

On a horrid Saturday morning, full of angry skies with horizontal rain spewing across the playing fields, Gordon was playing football for his school team. Henry Compton versus Latymer in the West London schools’ cup. Zoe’s parents had coaxed her into watching her older brother, Luc, on his debut for the senior team, in spite of the appalling weather.

Things weren’t going too well for Zoe, what with freezing on the side-lines in Baltic conditions and the fact that Henry Compton were winning easily against the posh kids. It seemed things were about to get worse, as one of the Henry Compton players slid in for a tackle near the touchline, only to completely mistime his attempt to get the ball and career into Zoe, knocking her off her feet so fast she had no time to react. She squawked like a frightened sparrow as she flew upwards before crashing towards earth with a thump, landing right on top of the fallen player. Face down and shell-shocked, she realized he had tensed and held out his arms to break her fall. As she lay there she blushed, noticing they were perfectly positioned in a loving embrace – her body pressed firmly against his muscular frame and her tender lips an inch away from his.

‘So sorry, so very sorry!’ The player kept repeating as he slowly helped her to her feet and patted down her muddy parka. ‘Are you okay? I’m so sorry.’

Such a shock might normally be expected to expose her youthful fragility. Usually she would cry, but only a solitary tear escaped as she struggled to regain her composure. There was something in the manner in which the player had shown care for her well-being amidst the recklessness of the incident that surprised and affected her unexpectedly. Rather than cry, this was an occasion to smile that wonderful, wide-mouthed smile showing her immaculate white teeth with a hint of overbite.

‘I’m okay, thank you,’ she said reassuringly, as he turned and scampered back on to the field of play. Needless to say, much fussing and whinging followed from her overprotective parents, who reacted as if their porcelain doll had smashed into a hundred pieces. They would have preferred to take her straight to A & E to get her checked out, had Zoe not convinced them she was unharmed and, with hindsight, admitted to finding it quite amusing: her repeated rebuttals only leading to further suspicion that she was concussed.

After the match ended, Zoe was sitting in the back of the family Volvo waiting on her brother, still copping an earful about the dangers of undiagnosed brain trauma, when a drenched, muddy, zombie-like creature tapped on the side window. She wound it down to find the player who had upended her offering yet another apology and seemingly checking to make sure she had recovered from the ordeal. Much to the alarm of her parents, Zoe stepped out of the car and continued the conversation with the zombie in the drizzling rain.

‘You know I couldn’t focus on the match after wiping you out,’ began the zombie. ‘I’m Gordon, by the way, but everyone calls me Git’ He stretched out his right hand but on seeing it was caked in hardened mud and resembled the colour and texture of a tree root, he tried to wipe it on his equally muddy jersey and eventually withdrew, hiding it behind his back.

‘Honestly, I’m fine, it’s not a problem. Besides, I got a quick, inadvertent squeeze from a hunky footballer. Bonus! What more could a girl want?’ laughed Zoe.

‘Oh! I didn’t come over to check if you were okay,’ blurted Gordon. It wasn’t what he’d meant to say but, flustered and love-struck, the words came out all wrong. He tried to correct himself. ‘Sorry, I mean I did come over to check on you but I wanted to…’ His sentence drifted into tongue-tied oblivion. Inside his head he was reciting 18th January 1975, Chelsea 0 v 2 Leeds: Philips, Locke, Harris, Hay, Hinton, Cooke....

He found his voice again. ‘And now I’ve offended you and you’ll think I’m awful.’ But Zoe van Dijk didn’t think he was awful. In point of fact she thought he was quite wonderful, totally different from any boy she’d ever known.

Gordon took a slow-motion, backwards step. ‘What I really came to say was that you are the most beautiful girl I’ve ever seen, that’s all.’ With his confession out of the way, Gordon retreated quickly, somewhat embarrassed but nevertheless inwardly proud for having had the courage to get it out there. He racked his weary brain trying to work out what on earth had come over him.

He turned to wave goodbye. ‘’Tis fresh morning with me when you are by’ then pleaded ‘What’s your name?’ and slowly walked towards the dressing room. Given the weather conditions, a parting quote from The Tempest was appropriate, if a little unorthodox.

‘Come back here and I’ll whisper it,’ Zoe teased and without delay or thought, he ran towards her as if drawn by magnetism. When he reached her, she stretched up and stroked his cheek with her hand and very softly pulled his head towards hers. ‘Zoe, Zoe van Dijk,’ she whispered into his ear. ‘Forty-two Melrose Gardens, Hammersmith.’ She kissed his muddied cheek, came down off her tiptoes and made her way back into the rear of her father’s car. Once inside she made a sign to Gordon as if to say, ‘Phone me!’ Gordon stood rooted to the spot, not even noticing that the rain had become much heavier again until a voice from the direction of the pavilion called his name.

‘Gordon, come and get changed. What’s wrong with you, boy? You’ll catch your death!’ roared his football coach from the doorway of the nearby concrete carbuncle.

There were genuine physiological reasons why Gordon hadn’t been able to focus on the game after the girl-crash incident, known only to him. The same reasons he had to wait until the other players had changed before entering the pavilion. It happens to young and old men alike, but mostly young men and often for no apparent reason. Only this time there was good reason. Gordon had played the last ten minutes of the match with a stonker of an erection, the likes of which he’d never known. At one stage, he thought his penis was trying to saw its way through his shorts and he simply couldn’t run. Self-conscious and embarrassed, he pulled his jersey down over his shorts as much as it would stretch and hid as far away from the ball as he possibly could.

Even after the match ended he couldn’t subdue his loins and there was simply no way he could be seen by his teammates in such a precarious state of arousal. He hung about until he had worked out the reason for his member standing to attention and then, adrenaline rushing through his veins and unable to keep his feelings to himself any longer, he rushed to tell Zoe how she made him feel (fortunately using a romantic euphemism, as opposed to his inner thoughts that raged You’ve given me a massive boner!).

It was the best moment of his life; that kiss. He could still feel the tingle of her warm, cherry lips and the touch of her silken skin against his as he trudged towards the pavilion. After making sure everyone else had left, he showered, changed and floated on cotton wool clouds all the way home to Fulham, with a little help from the No. 47 bus.

Back home, he made a beeline for the small veneered oak table in the hall where the telephone sat: below it, the drawer that housed the West London directory. Rummaging through the pages until he found ‘V’ he used his index finger to comb the list of surnames until he saw the entry for ‘van Dijk, J. 42 Melrose Gardens, W6.’ Having traced her, self-doubt and nervous anticipation set in, the uncertainty lingering well into a restless night. Sleeping with the directory next to his pillow, he waited for love’s courage to conquer the fear of rejection and around eleven on Sunday morning he motivated himself sufficiently to make the call.

Two years on from that first contact, here he was placing a bouquet of freesias against Zoe van Dijk’s headstone. Gordon opened his wallet and took out his favourite photograph of the girl he loved, holding it up to the light and talking to it. No words were uttered but inside his head he was telling her of his impending trip to LA and asked for forgiveness for not being able to visit her for a few weeks.

He kissed the photograph and whispered, ‘Love you, Zoe,’ and carefully placed it back into his wallet before pulling himself away from her grave, towards Fulham Broadway Underground Station. In an ideal world, he would stay by her side forever until death took him but she wouldn’t want that anyway. She’d want him to live, to love.

2

AFTERNOON DELIGHT

June 1982

Restlessly fidgeting at the breakfast bar of her rented cottage on the outskirts of Henley-on-Thames, Nakita Brown was unusually edgy. Excited almost to the point of sexual arousal. She stifled a giggle, crossed her legs and swung back and forth, left and right, on the black leather stool like a lubricious schoolgirl. Her fingers lightly danced along the grained marble worktop in nervous anticipation and she reined back a chuckle every time another song was announced and subsequently aired. Record sales were clearly much higher than she’d expected and hoped for.

It was early summer, 1982 and in the absence of ‘Apple’ or ‘Spotify’ downloads, instant sales inventories or statistical boffins constantly texting ever-changing updates in consumer trends to record company executives, Nakita, along with every other performing artist of the day and the popular music-loving public, was tuned into the ‘Top 40’ countdown on BBC Radio 1, 275-285 medium wave, to find out what was the new UK number one single. For the last two weeks, the top seller had been Brian and The Badgers with the dreadful follow-up single to their massive hit ‘Badger Shuffle’, although the title of their newest release escaped her momentarily. But with public hype and sales of black, mock-Regency jackets and ruched blousons rapidly waning, and universal consensus that the follow-up ‘TB or Not TB’ was utter bilge, it was generally accepted that it was time for Brian Badger to roll over or scurry back to his sett.

By the time Radio 1 disc jockey Fuzzy Franklin announced ‘Candelabra’ by the Manchester indie band, Incense, was in at number three, Nakita knew she’d cracked it. ‘Candelabra’ a superbly crafted, brilliantly produced, gothic number with haunting vocals was the main contender to rival her own song for pole position. But for all it’s undoubted merits, Incense had many detractors, haters even, who wouldn’t support the single regardless of its deserved plaudits due to the overt sexuality of their lead vocalist – ‘It’s that Carl Fitzgerald! Well, he’s a poofter isn’t he?’ After all, we are talking the sexuality intolerant, prejudiced days of 1982.

As expected, it was confirmed Brian and his band of short-legged omnivores had indeed fallen to number two and the veteran disc jockey began the customary ‘Top 40’ countdown in reverse order, before revealing the new top seller. The all-American gal with the obligatory big hair and a beguiling smile beamed and shrieked with pleasure, and flashed her perfect, sparkling white teeth. She summoned her husband from reading the Sunday supplements, grabbed a bottle of champagne from the fridge and smartly handed it to him to do the honours. The world appeared to be smiling with her as ‘Uncle Fuzz’ smugly introduced the surprise new number one, as ‘Nakita’ with ‘Only You (Can Satisfy My Needs)’.

Finally, it was her turn to soak up the limelight after several years’ hard graft, gigging around the honky-tonks and gin joints of Nashville and Memphis without a hint of passing interest. Curious then, that the B-listed country artist’s big breakthrough should happen against all the odds, not in her homeland, but in the grey, orderly tedium of middle England. It mattered not to Nikita: record sales were all about the numbers game, not about painting pictures. With success confirmed, Nikita and her husband hastily quaffed their fizz in celebration and retired to the bedroom as the bubbles and the lure of fame drove their shameless lust.

August 2010

In downtown Whalley, a satellite town for the metropolis of Blackburn, Gordon Illingworth Thomson, or ‘Git’ to his acquaintances and mockers alike, sat at the end of the bar at The Dog Inn: a traditional, slightly tatty, oak-beamed hostelry with a reputation for being a haven for late-night, clandestine meets in the rear car park. He drew on his seventh cigarette of the day and toyed with his ‘Craggy Range’.

A resident in the area for the past nine years, locals still considered him a southern interloper. Nevertheless, he was quite settled living in the scenic, gentle, rolling landscape and green pastures of the Ribble Valley. He enjoyed the tranquillity and anonymity the area allowed him, without ever really fitting into the local community. Not that he was in the least bit bothered. He was content, or so he’d believed until today, just seeing out the rest of his existence in uncomplicated privacy. It was a good place to forget the past. Not that the past was shrouded in great mystery or intrigue; he just wanted to put unfulfilled ambitions, disappointments and heartache behind him and move on.

To born and bred Lancastrians Gordon was suspiciously different: he drank wine rather than bitter, drove a flash car, his pub quiz team of one had an uncanny habit of scooping the weekly prize, he spoke in a semi-refined Home Counties accent having been brought up and schooled in West London and, worst of all, he supported Chelsea FC. Despite proving over the years to be nothing less than a quiet, quintessential gentleman, Gordon was considered a bit of a smarty-pants, slightly aloof, a southern softie and very probably a queer, since he appeared to have no interest in dating women and unorthodox taste in male friends.

Born of a Scottish mother and Yorkshire father, Gordon predictably inherited many of the stereotypical traits borne of his cultural roots: affable, stubborn, humble, brutally blunt when the occasion required (and sporadically when not required), a canny sense of humour and a fondness for grain but more especially, grape. Blessed with an IQ of Mensa proportions, as well as being a gifted musician (he was a virtuoso pianist and accomplished guitarist), a life that promised so much had so far been anything but straightforward. Hampered by a lifelong condition that made social interaction awkward and difficult, and further fuelled by his dad’s insistence of a middle name for his son in honour of his own Yorkshire cricketing icon.

Saddled with the initials GIT he would be constantly reminded that he was aptly named, especially when his undetected medical condition caused him, at times, to act in an out of the ordinary, eccentric manner, typically when stressed or cognitively overloaded. Nowadays he would have been given a diagnosis of Asperger’s syndrome at a relatively early age – albeit he displayed a moderately mild strain – but for a child born in the 1960s, his unusual demeanour and peculiar traits were often attributed to him being ‘not quite right’. Such dismissive ignorance undermined his self-confidence to the extent that he began to believe the ill-deserved rhetoric, imprinting negatively on his psyche and giving him something of an inferiority complex.

The unwitting initials bestowed upon ‘Git’ proved a cruel parental parting gift, especially since his father was to flee the family home when Gordon was two, eloping with a medium from Barnsley called Margery; who foresaw a blissful future for her and Gordon’s dad living in peaceful harmony among the lavender fields in Provence. What she didn’t foresee was the articulated lorry that crossed the central reservation and ploughed head first into her Volkswagen Beetle on the M20, eight miles short of catching the Dover ferry during the grand romantic escape, killing both her and her lover instantly.

Shell-shocked and heartbroken at her husband’s sudden death and the simultaneous discovery of his affair with a woman who only weeks earlier had read her palm and foretold of a long and happy marriage, Gordon’s mum moved to London to build a new life, where she would eventually meet the man who would become her second husband and Gordon’s step-dad.

For the young Gordon, growing up in edgy, unpredictable inner-city London of the 1970s, life was confusing and hard enough; it was harder still to be taken seriously, as someone who often struggled socially, despite a hidden longing for peer group acceptance. Nudged to the periphery, he found solace in being distanced from his contemporaries by composing musical ‘ditties’ on the family piano and developing an encyclopaedic knowledge of current and past Chelsea FC players, memorizing their names, number of appearances, number of international caps and dates of birth.

Now firmly ensconced in middle age, Gordon had grasped a wider conceptual understanding of the world around him and armed with decades of learned behaviours and self-taught coping strategies (including inwardly reciting Chelsea FC teams when anxious), his invisible disability was even harder to recognize to the untrained eye. Even so, he still presented as slightly eccentric on occasion and his naivety was still periodically evident. Such innocence would manifest itself, for example, by introducing himself to strangers as ‘Gordon, but everyone calls me Git’, or in his unwitting misjudgement at the choice of Ribble Valley town in which to set up home. That was how Gordon inadvertently became the ‘Git’ from Whalley.

Into his fiftieth year but with fresh, boyish good looks and an athletic physique, he could easily have passed for being ten years younger. A fine head of wavy, sandy hair and an ever-present glint in his mischievous blue eyes contrasted with a bamboozled look of childish purity, suggesting butter wouldn’t melt in his mouth. Perennially dressed in a wardrobe straight out of Savile Row, he cut a dash, not unnoticed by the eligible women of the area, keen to snare a wealthy husband. Despite frequent advances he managed to keep would-be admirers at a discreet distance, largely because he didn’t pick up on the signals and eventually they would perceive his indifference as disinterest. Moreover, he’d been hurt, broken-hearted and left feeling confused in love before and he had no room in his life to walk that particular path again.

The usual drinking crew had assembled at The Dog Inn, perched on bar stools like jackdaws, waiting to peck and tease unsuspecting victims. Already half-cut from their booze-fuelled Sunday roasts, they split their focus between intermittently humming or singing along to the syrupy background music on ‘Fluff FM’ and on defying gravity: the potential embarrassment of losing the battle with Newton’s third law, should the mix of lunchtime vino and early evening ale cause them to keel over.

‘Eh up, chuck!’ Because as we know, all working-class northerners preface a statement of intent with that phrase, in the same way as all Scots sneak ‘Och aye the noo!’ somewhere into a sentence or the Welsh add ‘Boyo’ after every phrase. ‘What’s up with you?’ Carol the voluptuous, sexually overt barmaid poked at Gordon. ‘Look like you’ve seen ’t ghost, like.’

‘I have, sort of,’ Gordon responded. ‘Or rather heard one. It’s that song on the radio.’ Gordon liked Carol. He felt comfortable in her presence and, unlike most around, she didn’t treat him any differently despite his perceived oddness.

‘What’s wrong with it?’ Carol enquired, pressing her able, overflowing bosom down on the other side of the bar. ‘It’s catchy! I remember my mum playing it when I was a young ’un.’ Despite her breasts being in their early twenties, the wrinkled hands, tortoise neck and deep crow’s feet suggested a woman in her late forties or, very probably, early fifties.

‘It’s mine, I wrote it,’ replied a wide-eyed Gordon glancing up and seeing her heavily made-up face across the counter, expecting or at least hoping for some reassurance or empathy. ‘It was the first song I ever wrote back in my teenage days. My dad was from Leeds and he ran out on my mum and me, with a psychic called Mystic Margery.’

‘You don’t mean Mystic Meg do you, Gordon? She’s from round here. Accrington, I think!’ interrupted Carol.

Gordon continued, ‘Except they changed the words! It was originally called ‘I’m Never Going Back To Leeds!’

‘Are you sure about that, Gordon?’ Carol, still half-expecting a killer punchline, was coming. ‘You’re having me on, chuck. You’re always having me on.’ The hairs on the back of Gordon’s neck were bristling at not being taken seriously. He inhaled sharply and responded in the only way he felt he could convince her, by breaking into song:

‘I’d go back to Burnley, across to Blackburn

Spend more time in Liverpool too,

I’d revisit Cardiff and beautiful Bath

And spend a day at Bristol Zoo,

Even the Norfolk Broads where I once fell off a boat

And ended up to my armpits in weeds,

I’d happily revisit in Bridlington

But I’m never going back to Leeds.’

Poor Carol didn’t know whether to burst out laughing or plant a kiss on the cheek of the naughty little boy directly opposite her. She opted for both, just to be on the safe side.

‘Oh, Gordon, that was genius, brilliant. Bloody funny how you came up with that on ’t spur of the moment!’ She cocked her ear to the far side of the bar, still smiling, to serve another needy customer. ‘Pint of Worthington’s coming up, Bob.’ She turned and wiggled provocatively, constrained by her tight, tan leather skirt, across to the far side of the bar.

Gordon momentarily retreated back into his shell. Was it the smell of Carol’s cheap perfume or her heaving cleavage that had caused him to lower his guard? It was most unlike him. He’d heard the song many times on the radio over the years and, of course, the others. Whatever the catalyst, he was at breaking point and wasn’t going to stay quiet any longer. He’d had his fill of routinely performing cover versions. He was going to unleash his song writing prowess to the world. Well, the northern counties of England and the lowlands of Caledonia at least.

He gulped down the last of his Sauvignon Blanc and made for the exit. But before he reached the door he called out to Carol, ‘They stole my song, you know! Stole it and made a fortune!’ He turned away before he could make eye contact with Carol or anyone else, flung open the double doors and staggered out into the late summer sun. The jackdaws croaked, cackled and spluttered into their beer.

3

DUDE LOOKS LIKE A LADY

Notwithstanding the natural gifts Gordon possessed, it appeared as if he was resigned to an unfulfilled life and a mundane existence as a semi-professional musician playing gigs in the local pubs, hotels, restaurants and clubs throughout Lancashire and Yorkshire, with occasional forays into the far provinces of Cumbria, Northumberland and across Hadrian’s Wall into the border counties of Scotland. It wasn’t exactly life in the fast lane but it provided an outlet for his love of music and a structure, a routine. Gordon liked routine.

Along with his trusty sidekick, Marigold, and a back catalogue of home-made backing tracks beamed from a Korg keyboard, they’d perform two or three gigs a week, earning roughly five hundred quid each; decent pocket money. More hobby than job, musically and career-wise it was going nowhere. They both knew it but they enjoyed performing and providing good quality, safe, background music to the middle classes as they wined and dined on beef Wellington and belted down a cheeky Shiraz or two.

But with a major decision having been made, nothing now was going to stop Gordon Thomson. First port of call was to inform Marigold, and true to Gordon’s modus operandi, it had to be done immediately. Having drunk too much to drive, he hopped on the next bus to Barnoldswick, announced himself at Marigold’s door and walked in, as close friends are entitled and expected to do.

‘Only me!’ shouted Gordon as he made his way through the vestibule.

‘I’m in bed with my Teas-made!’ Marigold responded, shouting down the hall.

It was one of Marigold’s typically abstract, coded messages that Gordon didn’t pick up on. The Teas-made, it transpired, was a bejewelled and beguiling blonde beauty in her early thirties: the wife of an influential local businessman, who evidently had a penchant for cross-dressers. Gordon’s appearance threw her into a mix of guilt and panic as she flapped around like a worried bantam, totally naked, picking assorted articles of clothing off the bedroom floor. She fluttered her wings and strategically covered herself, before making a hasty retreat to the en-suite.

‘Gordon darling, marvellous day for it don’t you think?’ a clearly sexually satisfied and content Marigold exclaimed, unmoved by a third party entering his lair. The bathroom door sprung open and a blonde mane and pink, pouting lips appeared.

‘See you next week!’ And the Teas-made blew a kiss towards Marigold, and then shot a look towards Gordon who stood somewhat embarrassed in the middle of the room. ‘He didn’t shag me!’ the Teas-made proclaimed, aiming another stinging glance at Gordon. And with that, the bedroom door swung shut and she was off. Back to her pompous, disinterested husband and the mundaneness, yet financial security, of trophy wifedom.

Gordon stood expressionless, totally unmoved by her outpouring. He didn’t care and besides, he had more important matters to attend to. ‘I wish I had your gall,’ he gestured to his friend. ‘I really do!’

Marigold’s retort was as acidic as it was wonderfully