Vince le Magma (Drums)
During the early stages of puberty, towering drum virtuoso Vince le Magma was torn between the joys of beating his skin
and the hard sweat of choreographed wrestling. He explained in his broad cockney accent "On my manor, you either took
up tub thumping or became a wrestler. The only other option was a life of petty pilfering. Well,
I wasn’t about to do chokey for no one so I got myself a set of drums from Woolworths and I ain’t never looked back since!"
Defiant words indeed from the gentle giant who, in fact, lost both of his legs in a freak toilet accident during the
darkest days of his solvent abuse era. Fortunately, Vince’s near neighbour was the bastard son of one time Blue Peter
presenter John Noakes. The plucky offspring, who was fortunately blessed with his estranged father’s gift for
improvisation and also held a First-Aid certificate, managed to stem the bleeding and save both feet; the legs however,
were lost, but gifted young Noakesey was able to cunningly craft a suitable pair of replacement legs from old drum sticks,
sausage meat and double sided sticky tape. Both Vince’s future career and his dreams were saved. Hooraaahhhh!!!!!
Vince’s favourite dunking biscuit is the Arrowroot Thin. His favourite dry biscuit is the Custard Cream.
Trip Switch (Vocals / Guitar)
Tee-total teenager Trip is an experienced musical force despite his tender years. He has managed to develop a deep & craggy,
angst-ridden frown which belies his time on this earth, by suffering the efforts of his chosen football team. As a toddler,
Trip recalls the glory days of his beloved East Burton Albion; when the team were all on the Atkinson diet
and Sheila Ferguson and the Four Tops all played for the first team; Halcyon days indeed. Trip purchased his first
guitar from Toys’r’Us when he left school two years ago and still maintains a large paper round in the Lower Gornal
area in order to pay off the money his mother loaned him.
Trip loves nothing more than dunking his favourite Malted Milks in a steaming hot cup of Tetley tea.
On dry days, he is a fool to the confectious delights of the Iced Fancies and /or Jammy Dodgers.
"It’s a devil’s own choice!!" he opines whilst agonising over the heavily laden biscuit barrel.
Christian Forthright (Lead Guitar)
Raised on a Dorset commune by his parents [mother was a semi-professional pianist on the UK country music scene;
father was middle-management in the typewriter business], the young Christian spent his early years weaving hedgerows
and painting pots. But his mother’s musical abilities soon cast their spell and by the time Christian was 14 he was a
proficient performer on several instruments, most notably the mandolin. However, when Christian was 20 his life underwent
an epic transformation; it was during the commune’s annual mushroom eating competition that he heard an "inner voice"
telling him to listen to the works of Black Lace. Christian’s appetite for this exciting new world of rock music was
insatiable and before long he had mastered the guitar and was travelling the country in a mullet-rock band called
"Anaemic Musings". The rest of the story is lost in the myths of time - suffice to say that Christian is currently
revelling in his "Festivals" role and has no immediate plans for a return to the complex weft of hedgerows.
Christian’s preferred biscuit for dunking is the Ginger Nut [in Safeway Savers coffee]. When the coffee jar runs empty,
he favours the woody taste of the Garibaldi.
Quentin Spentlove (Bass / B. Vocals)
Quentin’s roots are cloaked in tragedy. Orphaned at the tender age of 11 months when his parents were killed in an
unfortunate freshwater fishing accident, his formative years were spent in institutions - even now he refers to his
father as Dr Barnado and his mother as "The Matron" - before being adopted by Northumbrian greengrocers,
Peggy and Clive Spentlove. The adolescent Quentin was smothered in love by his septuagenarian adoptive parents
and spent most of his teens working in their shop and studying, with little social contact. Later, he wrote a
thesis entitled "Aquatic Creatures and Breathing" [perhaps in an effort to understand the fishing-related loss
of his parents] and it was whilst at Leeds Polytechnic that Quentin discovered the joys of friendship and the pleasures
of the flesh. It seems that he rebelled against his cloistered upbringing and fell in with the college misfits,
who accepted him with open arms and before long Quentin was known as The Head, because of his phenomenal capacity
for indulging in pot. During this time he became deeply interested in the music scene and joined the hip college band,
"Pill Or Be Pilled" as bass player and lead singer. This lead to a string of bands over the ensuing ten years, until
a bitter argument over Quentin’s "sexual gymnastics with the drummer’s wife" saw him ousted from Ukrainian chart-toppers
"Head Or Alive". He has now found his musical soul mates.
Biscuits, be they for dunking or otherwise, are not an option for Quentin due to his wheat allergy, although he occasionally
drops a Fig Roll with a Horlicks "to push at the envelope of Death".
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