Now that the plumbing is unblocked, thanks to eleven highly trained exponents of the plumbing art, I can allow myself a short pause, mid cast-party, to review the triumphs of the eleven days I have masterminded in pursuit of my true love’s happiness:
- Frozen partridges have been nailed to pear trees;
- Doves have been painted to turn them ‘turtle’;
- Special rendition has removed hens from France;
- Rings have been forged – not just the one ring, but five;
- Stolen geese have been encouraged to lay and swans have been borrowed from the Crown.
In addition, I’ve hired exotic dancers, rustled up a flash mob of ladies and blackmailed peers of the realm. All this, plus some stuff on internet banking can be found below in the links to previous episodes (read them slowly, as I’ll be taking a rest after this, but if you liked the series, ‘like’ the blog or the Facebook page and I will return with more after I’ve had a lie down and ‘enjoyed’ my true love’s undying appreciation.)
There’s one more thing to arrange: the drummers… twelve of them.
Now all modern bands have a drummer, so I figure all I have to do is call up a reputable music booking agent, say I’m organising a little ‘Twelve Nights of Christmas’ concert, flex the flexible friend (now reinvigorated by the Viagra of my bank loan) and all will be well. I’ve decided to call it ‘Davestock’. Why not? I’ve deserved to become eponymous.
The first booking office I call is not so helpful. Most of the big bands are out of town. The big hitting international headliners have all made the trip across the Atlantic pre-Christmas to guest in the finals of X-factor, and now they’ve gone home to rehab. Presumably, their psychosis is due to guilt at the prostitution of their art. They must surely have loved music way back when, right? Otherwise they wouldn’t have done all the practice.
In the next call, a young woman sucks her teeth at my proposition. The noise of air rattling past gingivitis is audible (just as well really, because I can’t see her).
“Hard,” she says. “It’s a time of great opportunity. Bono has hurt his arm.”
“Huh?” I say, in confusion.
“Ah, yes,” she says, like Mystic Meg, “but when Bono hurts his arm, everyone’s fingers start to itch. The whole thing cascades down, you see. With everyone in rehab, there’s a vacuum. U2 cancel a few arenas, one of the Rolling Stones has a stroke, and we’ve got a tidal wave starting. Everyone has to move up to the next level; before you know it, ‘McBusted’ are splitting up again just to cover the number of available bookings and ‘Joe Bloggs and His Washboard Five’ are playing the Albert Hall. No one’s gonna turn up for a little provincial music festival. See what I mean? I couldn’t even book you John Cooper Clarke for your pub quiz night.”
“I only need drummers,” I explain.
“Drummers are very difficult, rare even,” she says. “Don’t you see, it’s quite the most dangerous role in the band. Think of Jon Bonham, Keith Moon, that guy in Def Leopard who lost his arm… you can’t spend your evenings beating animal skins and snorting coke behind the singer’s ass without going crazy. Pretty soon in Rock ‘n Roll, crazy equals dead. Queen have gone through a shed load of singers since Freddie died; only ever had one drummer. See what I mean? Undead drummers, those who can hack it, them you hang onto.”
“But I have this dream… Davestock,” I plead. “There must be something I can do. I can’t fail at the last hurdle.”
“This Davestock, is that, like, a charity thing?” she asks.
“Why would that make a difference?”
“It makes all the difference in the world,” she says. “Pop stars will do almost nothing for money, except for very large amounts of money and – even then – only on days that suit them, but they’ll turn up at the drop of a hat if you offer them nothing and tell them it’s tomorrow. All you have to do is say it’s for charity.”
“Why would that make a difference?” I repeat, not getting the significance of the ‘no money’ thing.
“If you wrap it up like a noble cause, they’re shit-scared someone else will do it. There’s nothing worse career-wise than not doing something that someone less famous than you has agreed to. It makes you look mean and unlovable. Pretty soon, the person who said yes is the biggest thing on the planet, and you’re judging ‘The Voice – UK’. Don’t you remember Live Aid? Scritti-Politti weren’t at Live Aid.”
“Who are they?”
“Exactly,” she says.
“So if I were to ring bands and tell them that all the other bands were going to be at Davestock, then they’d all turn up… for nothing?”
“Quite possibly, but you need to do it in a strict order,” she warns. “Tell them that an up-and-coming band that’s just got bigger than them (Christmas Number One, that sort of thing) is going to do the show. That usually makes them wet themselves. Do they let the upstarts have the gig and risk losing the altruistic high ground as well as chart positions, or do they try to grab top billing and try to prove the upstarts are still upstarts?”
“One Direction and Take That?” I suggest.
“No, for Barlow, all you have to do is tell him Robbie Williams is in the frame. If you can tell him Royalty is involved, that usually helps with Gazza as well. He’s very MBE-centric, working on a Knighthood.”
“I know the Spencers,” I tell her. (Note: see episode ten to decode this gag.)
“Perfect,” she says. “Remind him about Elton John and you’re in. Royal patronage always helps to get the ball rolling.”
“Is that how Geldof got started?”
“No, he just swore at them in Irish and told them he’d been sent by God. I don’t think that’s going to work for you.”
Inspired by this inside information on the industry, I grab a couple of the drunken Lords and start hitting the phone. Promising them the contact details of the right ‘Ladies’ works a treat (they don’t know the contact details I have involve Twitter), and soon we are networking through their contacts with various honourable patrons of charities, onto showbiz agents, wheeling and dealing until we winkle out telephone numbers of the artists themselves.
By mid afternoon, we’ve got nine bands, three soloists and a couple of session drummers who think they’re going to play on a charity single.
I do a quick count. “We’re one drummer short,” I moan.
“Why don’t you get Phil Collins?” someone suggests. I think he’s one of the plumbers who crashed the party after they’d fixed the bathroom. “He’s always up for a good concert. Remember he’s the guy who liked Live Aid so much he flew by Concorde to be at both concerts.”
“I don’t think we could get Concorde out of mothballs at short notice,” I point out, though strangely I do consider it.
“No problem,” says the plumber, “I know a guy named Reg, who does tribute nights. Lives over in Daventry. We could order a Domino’s and get the delivery boy to give him a lift over on the back of his moped.”
So that’s what we do. Our principal expense for Davestock is forty-two vegetarian pizzas, a dozen garlic breads and a Mighty-Meaty. The police turn up after we unleash all twelve drummers and windows start dropping out of frames in the surrounding houses, but it’s OK because I know the Spencers and the Chief Constable is in the same masonic lodge.
All ends happily. My true love is satisfied, and I have laid the ghosts of the 1780’s song. Rather like Phileas Fogg, I have proved that the world can be circumnavigated in less than eighty days, and that seventy-eight ridiculous gifts can be delivered in twelve. The festive period is now at an end. Time to put away frivolity and return to the real world.
If you haven’t done so yet, check out the rest of the series…
- The Partridge in the Pear Tree
- The Two Turtle Doves
- The Three French Hens
- The Four ‘Corley’ Birds
- The Five Gold Rings
- The Six Geese-A-Laying
- The Seven Swans-A-Swimming
- The Eight Maids-A-Milking
- The Nine Ladies Dancing
- The Ten Lords-A-Leaping
- The Eleven Pipers Piping
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