For one thing, he was the original grumpy
old man but, more importantly, he had a
severe speech impediment. I have no wish
to make fun of any disability but I think that,
with the best will in the world, you have to
appreciate the irony of having a manager
who not only found it difficult to make
himself understood to prospective bookers
but who, when he did get us a job, had
problems telling us where it was.
A
fter Westy came Barry. By this time we
had changed the name of the group
to, ‘The Stormbreakers’. Barry was a biker,
six feet of him – and that was just across
the shoulders. Barry, unsurprisingly, never
had problems persuading anyone to book
us. Anita, his four-foot-something wife,
was a lovely lady and I’m sure that on the
rare occasions where Barry’s brawn didn’t
do the trick, her charm did. Eventually, it
dawned on us that Barry’s unique approach
to acquiring work for the group was not
creating particularly good PR. To this day I
can’t remember who drew the short straw
to inform Barry that his services were no
longer required.
N
ext came Dave, assisted by his wife,
Mary. Under Dave’s management, we
purchased our first group van – actually
a Morris J2 mini-bus. We stripped out the
back seats, replaced them with bus seats
(fastened to the floor with screws – a deathtrap), and partitioned off the back where the
gear went. Amazingly, we used to get all five
group members, wives, girlfriends and gear
packed into that vehicle. Dave usually drove,
“Whadda
ya mean it doesn’t work It’s not meant to go under
your chin!”
“Oh no, It’s the grim rapper!”
16
www.thecartoonistsclub.com