"'ullo! We're Better Than You!"

I used to love announcing that as I took to the front of the stage and fiddled with the mic stand which was always too low. It was part incitement, part truth and part stupid.

Better Than You was in fact the name of one of the earlier bands I was in. It was hatched in the Tooting Tavern one night by myself and my long-term partner-in-crime Andy Meakins. His real name might be Andy Meakin but everyone always put an 's' on the end of it for some reason and it got so blurred that it didn't matter whether it should be there or not. Besides, his name just got shortened to Meeks which was cool. The fact that we shared the same initials was kinda cool too especially for songwriting credits. What was even cooler still was he got a t-shirt made up that read, "Who the fuck is Andy Moloney?" People used to walk up to him in pubs and enquire and he'd point at me and say, "Him!"

This, of course, was when cool was cool.

The other member of the band was a guy called Alan who I used to work with. We didn't like him but he had a vintage yellow Gibson Les Paul Junior that looked nice.

In those days to get a gig you had to have a demo tape which you would send to the promoter at a venue and his job was to then put you on with similar bands if he liked you enough. We didn't have a demo tape and nor did we want to pay to record one so we used to record obscure punk b-sides from our record collections onto a cassette and pretend it was us. This usually prompted a call from the promoter who would then want to know how many people you could bring on the night to pay to get in and buy his beer.

"Loads, mate!"

So we got booked. At least one promoter remarked that we looked nothing like we sounded like on the tape as we were unloading the gear. A few more said we didn't sound anything like we sounded like on the tape when we were doing sound checks. We had a stock excuse.

"We're actually a four-piece band but our singer is ill and we didn't want to let you down!"

One particular promoter sussed us straight away, thought it was hysterical and practically gave us a residency

The band wasn't that good - later ones were much better and more successful - but what it lacked in talent it made up for in entertainment. We weren't about to let the music get in the way of the performance so there was a lot of jumping around at the expense of correct notes, lots of between song vignettes/anecdotes, ocarina playing during string changes and general hostility towards anyone who had paid to get in to see us. We loved it if they shouted at us because, "We can shout louder than you - we've got microphones and guess what? We got in for free!"

It may have been after a gig, I'm not sure, but one night Meeks and I decided to drive from London to Wales. I can't remember why. I do remember that we arrived at dawn and wrote "We're Better Than You" in the sand in huge letters all along Aberavon beach before getting in the car and driving back to the big city.



This was never far away.


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