Going to Sea in a Sieve: The Autobiography (39 page)

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Authors: Danny Baker

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23. On the roof of Dryden Chambers, 1977. I seem to have gatecrashed a photo session for Mark’s band, Alternative TV. ‘Cheer up, lads! It’s pop music!’ (
JFA Archive
)

24. Bashing out copy at the
NME
. I’ve never smoked so must be affecting the cigarette to impress the girl behind. It worked. We didn’t know it then but we were to spend the rest of our lives together.

25. With Peter Cook in 1979. We appear to have settled in some kind of Arabian Nights Grotto or possibly waiting our number to be called in a Marrakech cat house. (
Tom Sheehan
)

26. In Los Angeles to hang about with Michael Jackson. Here I am showing the strain with his PR Judy. This living-for-pleasure-alone racket was showing few signs of tailing off.

27. Very tired on Ian Dury’s tour bus. It’s fair to assume that, though journalistically diligent, I had been wildly caning it. (
Tom Sheehan
)

28. My first TV publicity picture, for the series
Twentieth Century Box
. Theme-tune writer John Foxx and producer Janet Street Porter join me in dressing down. (
LWT
)

29. In the lounge awaiting the flight to Miami and a rendezvous with Earth, Wind & Fire. Wendy and I were running away, 1981. (
Anton Corbijn
)

30. The Runaways, Miami, 1981.

31. By the power of flim-flam alone I’m now in Honolulu. Here, I’m saying hello to my aghast bank manager.

32. Wendy and I, impossibly young and impossibly broke and yet, most impossibly of all, in Hawaii. What me, worry?

1. Mum and Dad, Fred and Bet, on holiday in Leysdown, 1960. Dockers had only recently started earning good money. Their clothes if not the location show it.

2. Sister and brother, Sharon and Michael, at Leysdown. I am in Dad’s arms behind. Didn’t dance then, don’t dance now.

3. Mum and the kids, 1960. Many people mistake this location for Hawaii but in fact it was taken on the Moon some nine years before the Americans arrived.

4. With Dad. I’m wearing what was known as a ‘sloppy Joe’ T-shirt. Dad working the vest look in a way that I could never carry off.

5. Our garden at Debnams Road. The proximity of the railway arches in the background made it possible for passengers to hit our tortoise with discarded fag packets.

6. In the the wonderful Rotherhithe School Library, 1966. I am telling the photographer my name was Peter. I have no idea why I lied like that. Note: local barber’s cavalier attitude to traditional fringe-cutting.

7. Debnams Road, where we lived at number 11 (see handy arrow) for the first 20 years of my life, pictured shortly before demolition in 2012. The site is probably called Dock Quays Happening Apartments or similar today.

8. Debnams Road glimpsed, in reverse, from out in the grounds. I have marked me and my brother’s bedroom with a star. It used to be marked with animal fats and chemical run-off from the nearby railway arches.

9. Christmas Day in Debnams Road. Millwall kit, tracksuit boots and ball. I can still recall the smell of their exotic newness. Meanwhile curtains look for any excuse to go up in flames.

10. Mum and Dad in the kitchen, 1970.

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