However, not all was doom and gloom. The country was rocking with Amadeus and waving chickens in the air while sticking deckchairs up their noses. Boys were booming out Lessons In Love from their Ford Escorts with fluffy dice. Rock Lobster was shimmying up the chart. Everybody was moving, everybody was grooving, baby. Chig didn’t really care about his course anyway, and chart-topping band Doctor And The Medics were due to play in the Guild Of Students. This was actually a much-anticipated event. The Guild had many gigs on over the years that Chig was there, of many musical flavours. Chig went to them all. Some were the old troopers (Gary Glitter, Q-Tips). Some were quite good tribute bands, at a a time when the idea was quite new (The Strolling Bones). Some were just past their peak (Imagination). Some never had a peak (Clint Eastwood & General Saint). Some had passed their peak before any of us remembered and were inexplicably revived (Jethro Tull!) Some had achieved a degree of success with a bit more to come (Amazulu). Occasionally, though, the idle hippies in the Ents office would turn up trumps and book a band that was actually quite cool (The Housemartins – twice!) or on the brink of pop stardom (Erasure, the week before ‘Sometimes’ hit the chart, Brother Beyond – twice!) In Chig’s first year, 1985, they had struck lucky by booking an almost unknown Coventry band whose first album was unheard outside the Midlands, but which Chig had on tape and copied over and over again for friends before the gig. The band was King, and as luck would have it, Love And Pride was spending one of its three weeks at #2 on the very day that they played in the student union. Chig had even taken his visiting sister across to the union in the afternoon, where they met Paul King, had a quick chat and took a fuzzy photograph of him. Oddly, he never once mentioned his forthcoming career as the ‘VJ’ face of MTV.

But what, I hear you say, does all this have to do with the supposedly funny anecdote you were promised? Actually, bugger all. I’ve gone wildly off the subject. It’s 22.50, I’m typing this while watching Comic Relief, I’m on my second can of lager, I’ve been up since 6am and got stuck in a traffic jam on the way home. I’m tired and emotional. I’ve (only!) blubbed twice so far at those little films that they’re showing which tear your heart out and make you stop laughing. (Will won! Hurrah! Robbie Williams got naked! Hurrah again!) Even worse, Chig is referring to himself in the third person again. Get on with it man!
· link