One More Movie! AKA The Ligger Years...Pt 1

Soooo today I revisited a bit of my history.

I went to see Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll, the Ian Dury biopic starring Andy Serkis. I had a little investment in it being good, apart from the £7.80 it cost me to get in. Thirty-two years ago Ian Dury and The Blockheads came to Preston to perform at The Guildhall, and me and my mates Peggy and Lynn had tickets to go see them.

I was a huge fan, I had one of the limited edition copies of Sex & Drugs on Stiff - I also had an "If it ain't Stiff, it ain't worth a fuck" t-shirts which I got free just by writing to them at 32 Alexander St and asking for one!

The afternoon of the gig, a Saturday, Lynn and Peggy met me for lunch - I worked Tuesday to Saturday at the Lancashire Evening Post - and we tried to work out how we could get backstage and meet Ian Dury. I said "Let's say we've got a fanzine and wanna interview him". The girls agreed it was a good idea, so we went over to the Guildhall to see if there was anyone around we could try blagging with. Oh man! The arrogance and fearlessness of youth eh? I was 16 and invincible!

This guy Kosmo Vinyl appeared. He worked with the band and said that if we found him after the gig we could go meet Ian Dury and maybe do our interview. He asked what the fanzine was called and I just blurted out "The Ligger". It was a brilliant name as it was something I'd always aspired to be. I never wanted to fuck the bands, but I did wanna lig - hang out with em and drink their beer!

Anyway, we went to the gig and we did go backstage. Unfortunately, so did half of Preston. These were the days of punk rock and "no more heroes". We got our photo taken with Ian Dury, and were all set to scarper when Kosmo found us. He said that there was no chance of doing the interview tonight, but if we turned up on Sunday lunchtime, we could go with them to Liverpool and do the interview on the bus!

How could we refuse? Of course we told minor fibs to our parents. No halfway respectable parent would say yes to their 16 year old daughter asking if it was OK to go to another town on a tour bus with a "punk rocker".

Anyway, off we went. We met up with Kosmo outside The Crest hotel and he led us onto the bus and introduced us to Ian! He remembered us from the night before, so he was cool. As this whole scam had been my idea, I was selected to ask the questions (to be fair I had written them!) and Peggy and Lynn were gonna write down his answers. No tape recorders or shorthand for us!

I also took him a present. At the time he had a Union Jack on his front teeth and I had a pair of Union Jack socks, so I gave them to him. They were ankle socks and while he thanked me for them, he explained that he couldn't wear them, and rolled up his trouser-leg to show me why. I'd never seen a caliper before or indeed met anyone with polio, but as he showed me his leg he said that he only wore the thick fisherman's socks cos they stopped the caliper from rubbing. Talk about an ice-breaker!

Somehow, I managed to come up with enough interesting questions to hold his attention all the way to the Liverpool Empire. We were escorted in through the stage door, and got to watch the soundcheck - god it was so exciting! Like a dream come true!

We had to leave halfway through the gig to get a train back to Preston, but that was and still is one of the most magical days ever!

So that was my Ian Dury story. That interview was written up and eventually led to me getting a proper gig as a journalist a few months later when I moved to London.

The movie really was fantastic, Andy Serkis's portrayal is incredible, and while Kosmo Vinyl seems to have been totally written out of the story, it was reasonably accurate. If you're of a certain age, go see it, what a remarkable man.