The band that nearly made it. (Well, I would say that wouldn’t I?) Verdict had packed up.  I lived in huge mansion at Lawrie Park Road, Sydenham, in London.  Originally a squat it had population of families with kids and individuals, most of who had some artistic talents.  Kito from Verdict lived there too.  We built a rehearsal room in a derelict room in the basement and, when we split up, I still used to practice my new songs down there.  Into this house moved an eighteen year old, Tony Jeyes, who had the fortune, or otherwise, of having the room right above the practice room.  He would hear me hammering away at full volume.  He played a bit of guitar, but I knew he had a hankering to play bass, so I hassled him.  He borrowed a bass and then bought his own.  We were up and running. First of all we used Kim Ballard from the Mosquitoes to play drums but eventually got our own drummer after numerous auditions.  This guy was called Mark and used to play with the Wolfboys.  He was last seen on the box playing behind Alison Moyet on her record Love letters in the Sand.  A guy called Chris joined on keyboards and we set off playing gigs mostly in Sarf East London.  We built up a good local following and did some splendid gigs including supporting Gary Glitter at Goldsmith’s College.  He and his band didn’t deign to speak to us, so I was quite pleased when our reliably unreliable equipment blew the fuses for the whole hall, not once but three times in a row. This held up everything delightfully so we got to play to a bigger audience!!  Gradually, accumulating press and record company interest, we managed to get a support gig at the South Bank Poly playing before Essential Logic.  That was to be THE NIGHT with a big audience who started dancing during our sound check.  Brilliant. The music press was there and the record companies. Unfortunately our bass player decided to go home with his delectable girlfriend, (now wife), in the time before we were due to play, had carnal knowledge of the aforementioned girlfriend and bloody well fell asleep.  He also claims to this day that he thought we were playing at a later time than our allocated slot.  We waited and waited and were eventually forced to take our equipment off stage.  At first, I was dead worried thinking that he may have crashed his car and phoned up all the local casualty departments to check.  No signs of him.  He eventually turned up and I was incandescent with rage.  I just stormed out leaving the rest of the band to get the gear home.  I cried profusely for hours.  That, as they say was the end of that. That night could have been the night we got signed or maybe not.  We had got some classic rejections before this, including one from Charlie Gillett from Oval records, who actually put us on one of his shows and then really slagged us off afterwards.” No Image. No stage presence” he screamed. Dave Robinson from Stiff Records sent me a hand written letter after I had sent a demo saying, “ This is the biggest load of shite I have ever heard, but please feel free to send us anything else you do”!!!!

BBC Radio London had a band competition and our tape managed to get into the last show.  I think there were 6 other bands on the final radio show which was to decide the winner, who would have got a record contract, but they then refused to play the A side of our tape because it had a “Rude” word on it.  They slagged me off on the radio saying such things as” I can’t believe anybody is stupid enough to send us a tape we can’t play on the radio” That track is “ Dancing with the Doorpost” and I shall leave it up to you to decide if the word “Bullshit” would have offended the ears of the rock and roll public.  Absolutely absurd! They played the B-side and as you guessed we didn’t win!!

The tracks listed are various demos we did and I am very proud of the songs from that era.  We did reform the Holograms after about a year, when I had calmed down, but we only ever played for fun after that. Pete Shearer joined on drums and went from being a novice to a really tasty drummer very rapidly.  The final member was Tim Dyde on sax, who I met when he was doing his nurse training at the London Hospital. So far as I know they have all stopped playing music.