Is this piece Jon Gorvett‘s first ever piece of published journalism?
I have already written up bits of that last week; in particular the bizarre coincidence of The Bootleg Beatles at Lindsay Ball just hours before the real John Lennon was murdered.
As a postscript to that piece, Jon Gorvett, in a feat of extraordinary memory, writes:
I do remember the Bootleg Beatles gig, too, which, like the assassination, happened on my birthday (59 today – what the flying fuck, indeed?). For some reason, I too have no other recollection other than that it happened, though – the ball, that is – so perhaps I too was at Karen’s extraordinary party. I do have a vague recollection of her – curly hair, went out with some kind of biker type and was mates with David Perrins? *
Jon’s note reminded me that I had uncovered his epic expose about a new block being built from the December 1980 issue of Concourse, which I have used above as the headline image for this piece.
In truth, we cub reporters for Concourse were nearly all given stories of that magnitude to write as our initial pieces, apart from David Perrins who had somehow blagged his way into being the Arts Correspondent from the very start of his fresher year, as I reported in an earlier piece.
Most of us, other than David and Jon, had to wait until our second term to get our juvenilia published, but I did get a mention for hard work in that December issue:
That hard work can only have been typing and was not hard enough to find its way into my diary, so I expect it was just a few hours over a couple of evenings with pint in hand.
I hope I didn’t type Jon’s above piece, as the typing is awful and even Jon’s name is spelt wrongly. I think I was better than that, having had plenty of experience “editing” lesser journals for which “doing the typing” and “editing” tended to be one and the same thing.
Tuesday 9 December 1980 (after the partyette vignette)… Tired today. Got Phil result [this will be my Descartes essay]. Lindsay Xmas dinner OK. Earlyish night.
Wednesday 10 December 1980 – Not bad day. Prepared for ball. Went to ball. V Good indeed, went…
Thursday 11 December 1980 – …on so late went straight to 9:00 lecture!!! Went to bed about 8:00 exhausted.
Friday 12 December 1980 – last full day (OK). Went to Party in eve v good.
Saturday 13 December 1980 – Left Keele return home tired. Relaxed for rest of day.
Simon Jacobs’s impersonation of Princess Margaret was a sight to behold. I think he might have reprised the role occasionally in Ringroad subsequently.
Anyway, I have promised Dave Lee that I wouldn’t review the ball itself, as he is writing a book about Keele and the music scene in that era – click here for more information on that book – and I certainly don’t want to steal his thunder in these pieces. Suffice it to say that we saw Bow Wow Wow supporting Q-Tips. Those bands looked a lot like this in those days:
“Who was the poor, unfortunate lecturer condemned to teach the 9:00 lecture the morning after the Xmas Ball?”, I hear you all cry.
Well, as it happens, I had retained and have now retrieved my 1980-81 Foundation Year Programme, so I can exclusively reveal that it was Mr Smyth of the Economics Department talking about The Wealth Of Nations.
That week I started marking up my FY lecture list, so I can also exclusively reveal that I missed the 9:00 lectures on the Tuesday (after the Lindsay Ball) and the Wednesday (for no good reason) and apologise unequivocally to Keith Tribe and the late, great Les Fishman. I learnt from my mistake in the matter of missing Les’s lectures (which I found fabulous, as I discovered when I did show up at 11:00 on that Wednesday), so I did make it to Professor Fishman’s Marxian economics stuff on the Friday.
At least a bit of that economics stuff over the four years must have gone in.
…but I digress.
I have no idea whose party I went to on Friday 12 December but according to my diary it was “v good” and who am I to disagree with my own judgment on that?
Thanks for your hospitality, whoever you are. But let’s be honest, there probably wasn’t much hospitality involved – we probably all needed to bring our own booze. But that was OK.
Anyway, the first term was over. The diary is silent on how I felt, but I think I had probably already fallen in love with the place. Keele got lots of us like that.
*Postscript: an update to the above postscript on The Bootleg Beatles piece, supplied by globetrotting journalist Jon Gorvett, whose short-range memory is still absolutely fine. Whereas his long-range memory…
I’ve just realised that I have no idea who Karen was/is, and I have completely confused her in my addled way with Debbie, who was going out with the aforesaid biker and was a friend of DP’s. At least, I think that’s right…No, I’m pretty sure about that, because after reading your piece, I recalled how, at a much later date, I had had an unfortunate run in with said biker and his mates after they reckoned I was getting far too entangled with said Debbie at one of those Saturday night discos at the Onion. They were quite right, in retrospect, but in any case, it was Debbie I was recalling, I fear, not the mysterious Karen.
Jon Gorvett
It’s all in danger of getting very messy when I start writing up my 1981 diary, by the sound of it.
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