Red Wedge and Smegheads In January and February 1986, while I was doing loads of gigs up and down the country in my own little world, the big, mainstream Red Wedge tour got going featuring many of the left-leaning pop stars of the day. Billy Bragg, Wellers band The Style Council, Jimmy Somerville and The Communards, Junior Giscombe, Lorna Gee and Jerry Dammers, Madness, Heaven 17, Bananarama, Prefab Sprout, Elvis Costello, Gary Kemp, Tom Robinson, Sade, The Beat, Lloyd Cole, The Blow Monkeys and The Smiths all played some part. Then in March it was the turn of the spoken word performers and comedians. This was a much more low key event: the Red Wedge Cabaret Tour, with varying performers – comedians, poets, acoustic artists - at different venues all over the country. My diary tells me I did Barnsley, Leeds Poly, Huddersfield Poly and Newcastle Poly, with a couple of other more music-orientated ones to come later in Wales: more on them soon. Brilliant satirical comedy/music duo Skint Video were on with me, other performers I can’t remember apart from one who definitely sticks in my mind. Cue a rather, erm, cheesy story. From a very early age I have always liked a good knob joke, and despite being 56 I have to confess to the fact that I still do, much to my poor wife’s despair. An excerpt from my notorious poem ‘Joseph Porter’s Sleeping Bag’ is a prime example of the genre: ‘A mad bacteriologist’s dream/ Where bell end boursin reigns supreme/ And even bedbugs puke and gag/ It’s Joseph Porter’s sleeping bag’. The word ‘smegma’ - often truncated to ‘smeg’ – has always held a definite comedic appeal for me. (NB: the WORD. Not the SUBSTANCE, which is REVOLTING. Obviously). Even before I started performing as Attila one of the terms of abuse I had coined to hurl at anyone or anything which I thought deserved it was ‘complete and total smeghead’. It was certainly fairly prominently in evidence in my set at that time back in 1986. On the bill on that short tour was an affable up and coming young Scouse performance poet/comedian called Craig Charles. It does seem to me that a certain epithet, now familiar to the fans of TV sci-fi comedy ‘Red Dwarf’, may well have been implanted in his mind at those gigs. Of course, I may be wrong. If I am right, I’m certainly not the slightest bit, erm, cheesed off about it: there can be no copyright on references to helmet brie, and Craig had an unfeta’d right to use it how he wanted. Sorry, folks. I’ll stop right there.
Posted on: Sun, 26 Jan 2014 18:06:14 +0000
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