They f*** you up, your mum and dad. Example? My chum Lou, the gunman.

Lou greeted me with a small firearm yesterday

When I went to see my chum Lou at his flat yesterday lunchtime, the first thing he said was: “Ello, mate.”

The second thing he said was: “I’ve had a new machine gun delivered.”

All perfectly legal. Bullets can’t be fired from them. He provides them for movies.

“Did I tell you I found out who my grandfather was?” he asked me later.

“You didn’t know?” I replied.

“Well, I did and I didn’t,” he said. “Two or three years before my mum died, I said to her: Why don’t you tell me all the family secrets?

“She said: Well, I’m illegitimate. She was very ashamed of it. I said: Well, it ain’t your fault. It’s nothing to be ashamed of. Some people are born bastards; some people become bastards.”

“Yes,” I said. “After my father died, my mother told me her father had been illegitimate. But, to our generation, it doesn’t matter at all, does it? My grandfather was born in the 19th century. My mother told me in the 21st century. It was a shameful secret in the early 20th century; by the end of the century it was just normal.”

“I asked my mother,” Lou said, “How did you find out? She told me: I was born in 1917 and my father came home from the War in 1918… Oh! I said. That’s why he used to knock YOU about and not all the other kids? She said: Yeah. That’s why she was partially deaf. He used to bash her.

“When she was 13, her sister said: Do you know who that man is? My mum said: That’s the tallyman – it was a bloke who used to turn up in a Rolls Royce every week or two. Her sister said: No, that’s your dad. He’s giving mum some money for you.

“I thought my mum said he was the Honourable Playdel Bouvier so I looked it up. I found the Bouvier family, which was President John F Kennedy’s wife’s family and I said to my mum: Oh, you’re illegitimately related to JFK’s wife. But I was wrong.

“I tried to find this one Playdel person and eventually it came up Did you mean Pleydell-Bouverie? So I pushed the button and there he was. The Right Honourable Sir William Pleydell-Bouverie, 7th Earl of Radnor.

Lou’s mum & her World War II medals displayed on his wall

“This man didn’t have to give my mum’s mum money every week. If he owned the land she lived on, he could have just told her to fuck off. It was 1917. He would have been like a local god. He had huge amounts of money and nobody else had anything in those days. But he gave her money to raise my mum.”

I asked: “When did he die?”

“1968. I could have met him when I was young if I’d known.”

“Do you look anything like him?” I asked.

“I look more like my father,” said Lou. “And my son is more like my father than me. He’s just like his grandfather: a hard man.

“My father used to tell people that, during the Second World War, he dished out bullets and blankets. He said he didn’t actually fight in the War. After the War, he drank 50 bottles of Whitbread a day, because he was in the trade. He was a very dangerous man. If you touched him when he was asleep, he’d hit you and then he’d get the hump because you’d upset him. He was a very hard man to deal with.

“He’d tell me: Here’s some money, son, now fuck off. I could have any amount of money I wanted, but he wouldn’t put his arms round me and tell me he loved me.

“When he died, this bloke called Dosser Chapman phoned me up and said: I served in the War with your dad and I’m doing this scrapbook for the Lifeguards Association. Have you got any pictures of your dad?

“He said: Your dad was a wonderful man. I said: Was he? You shoulda tried living with him!

“This Dosser bloke said: No, no. We went rough the War together. He was a wonderful man. I said: You might have the wrong bloke, mate.

“Dosser said: We used to go on missions behind enemy lines. We’d say to each other: ‘You do it. No you do it. No you do it.’ And he would say: ‘Give me the fucking knife; I’ll do it’ and he’d go and kill a sentry.

Lou’s dad after the War

“I said: How many of these sentries did he kill? Dosser said: Well, I didn’t go on every mission with him, but I know he killed at least eleven men and he only ever got upset once. I said: Why was that?

“He said: He cut this bloke when this bloke was looking at his pay book. The pay book dropped.

“You don’t die right away when your throat’s cut. It takes about 10 or 12 seconds to bleed out. And, as the bloke dropped, my old man picked up the pay book and there was a picture of the guy’s wife and three little girls.

“He showed it to the bloke on the ground and the bloke looked at the picture as he died.”

“What happened then? I asked.

“Dosser said: Your old man started crying. So I left it about five seconds, then touched him on his shoulder and said ‘We gotta get on with it, mate’.”

“And then?”

“He wiped the knife, Dosser told me, and then killed the next one. So I said: Nah! I said: My dad didn’t fight in the War.

“Dosser asked me to send him pictures of my dad and he sent me some. He sent me this picture of a group of them with my old man sat at the front and at the bottom, written in at the time, was HELL’S ANGELS. This was about 1942 or 1943.

“I said to my uncle – who was about seven when my dad was a teenager: I didn’t realise my father fought in the War and killed people. He said: I’m not surprised. He was seconded to the Long Range Desert Group. I mean, my God! They were a load of murdering bastards dressed in pink.”

Now children’s toys of the Long Range Desert Group vehicles

“Pink?” I asked.

“They used to paint their jeeps pink.”

“Because it merged in with the sand?” I asked.

“Apparently so,” said Lou. “My dad also won the King’s Medal. It was stolen with my mum’s wedding ring from the old Conservative Club in the 1950s when I was a tiny child.”

“Your father ran the local Conservative Club, didn’t he?” I asked.

“Yeah, from 1950 to 1978 and, before that, he ran another Conservative Club for a year and, before that, he was at a Working Men’s club.

Lou’s dad (left) behind the bar at the local Conservative Club

“He was in the booze trade as soon as he left the Army, really. He gave up his driving licence and took to drink and then later he got pissed off with me cos I took drugs.”

“You were just doing weed, though?” I asked.

“Oh no, I got into everything.”

“But, at that time…”

“Oh yes, I was just smoking puff and he thought I was an awful person for taking cannabis and there was him banging back 50 bottles of Whitbread a day. For him, that was normal.”

“Literally 50 bottles a day?” I asked. “He wouldn’t be able to stand up.”

Lou greets me at his home, 2012

“You would think so,” said Lou. “But he could drink that amount and seem sober. If you gave him one whisky, though…fuck me, he was a really dangerous cunt then. He would knock my mother about.

“His family owned half of Upper Brook Street in Winchester, a hotel, two hairdressers and a bar. It’s all gone now. Him and his brothers were very good at betting on one-eyed, three-legged horses and drinking. It all went.”

Yesterday afternoon, my chum Lou showed me a couple of knives he had made recently.

They have little holes bored in their hollow blades so the fake blood will spurt out when it is pumped through a tube when you pretend to cut someone’s throat.

The final months of punk rocker Paul Fox of The Ruts: he never surrendered

The Ruts on the inside cover of their CD The Crack

(This was also published on the Indian news site WSN)

My chum Lou is an interesting man: he makes knuckledusters and knows interesting people. Last night, he was talking to me about Paul Fox.

Paul Fox was lead guitarist in the British punk rock band The Ruts. He died of lung cancer in October 2007.

So it goes.

“I used to bump into Paul every now and then at what’s now the Coy Carp in Harefield,” Lou told me last night. “On a Sunday, they used to have a few live bands down there. Paul was inspirational, absolutely amazing, a really sound guy. What a man! Never heard him slag anyone off. When I heard he’d got cancer, I told him: I’m your driver, I’ll look after you.

“One day he was in so much pain and I was getting pain tablets at the time but I didn’t need them any more… He was not getting enough pain killers from the hospital because I think a doctor there knew he’d had a problem with narcotics in the past and decided to keep him a little bit short.

“If it had been anyone else, they’d probably have got as much as they wanted, but he was constantly in pain. I used to say to people: When you meet Paul, please don’t squeeze him; he’s in so much pain.

“But Paul wouldn’t go Argh! get off! He’d just stand there and take the pain.

“So, anyway, I used to help him out with his tablets.

“Once, we were coming back about 2 o’clock in the morning from his sister’s in Hastings. He was groaning; he’d taken some tablets, but they hadn’t kicked in yet and he said to me: I’d rather this was over sooner rather than later. And I told him: Listen, Paul, if you want to make a job of it, I’ll help you.

“Yeah, he said, but, if they come after you and you get caught, you’ll go behind the door for that.

“I said: Stupid as I am, I would be like an Republican soldier. I would have done what I thought was right. OK. I’ll do me bird for it. But, if what I did was the right thing for that person I helped. I’d be like a soldier. I’d say I did the right thing.”

“You mean an Irish Republican soldier?” I asked.

“Yes,” said Lou, “they were very, very committed men, god bless ‘em. Brave men. They weren’t trained like British soldiers.

“So Paul said I’d rather it was over and I said Well, alright. And then I sat there thinking What have I done? I can’t go back. I’ve made a commitment.

“And Paul sat there for what seemed like ages, though it was probably only about ten minutes and eventually he said: No.

We’ll Never Surrender! – The Ruts’ Staring at The Rude Boys

“No what? I asked him.

“No, he said, We’re going to see it out to the end.

“I said: That’s good… Don’t forget the song…

“What song?

“We’ll never surrender.

“And we had a little laugh about that.”

The Ruts’ song Staring at The Rude Boys includes the lyrics We’ll never surrender.

It is on YouTube.

“It was re-recorded by local band Gallows,” Lou told me. “They got big. Paul was ever so appreciative of the money they made him.

“He told me: You know, I got £19,000 and I love this government. They’ve given me this place to live in and they’ve upped me dole money.

“I said: Well, it’s cos you’re terminally ill, Paul. That’s why, mate.

“And he said I’m so happy.

“Is there anything you want to do that you haven’t done? I asked him. Whatever it is, we’ll do it.

“I wanted to fly,” he said.

“Well, we can do that, I told him. I know a bloke with a small plane.

“Nah! I wanted to learn to fly, he said.

“And did he go up in one?” I asked.

“Well, a bit of him did,” replied Lou. “His ashes were thrown out over Northolt. Some of his ashes. The rest of his ashes, I think, are with his sister in Hastings, god bless her. She told me they were going to be in a wooden box, so I got a little silver plaque and engraved on it …We’ll never surrender!…

“He died in 2007 – six years ago now,” Lou told me.

“My mother died in 2007,” I told Lou.

So it goes.

“When they diagnosed the cancer,” Lou told me, “Paul asked them How long have I got? and the doctor said Ooh, you’ve got a long, long time.

Paul Fox in final gig with The Ruts at Islington in July 2007

“And he asked them Have I got time to write an album? and they said Absolutely.

“A couple of days later, they told him Here, Paul, we made a little mistake. You’ve got a rampant cancer. You may have six months to live. And that’s what he had. About five-and-a-half months. Bosh. He was gone. Bang. Gone.”

“It’s almost better shorter,” I said. “My father was the same. I asked the consultant how long he had left and the reply was Three months to three years and he died almost exactly three months later.”

“We were raising some money for Paul,” Lou told me last night. “We was doing a do. We still do it every year. The Paul Fox appreciation society, mate. We get together once a year and raise a few quid.

“I don’t forget about Paul but, you know, things go on… and then that comes round and I walk into that fucking bar and there’s a picture of him that night – the last night at Islington – and… it gets to me… it’s getting to me now… oh fuck… ”

“Have you seen Blade Runner?” I asked Lou.

“Yeah.”

“You know Rutger Hauer’s death speech?”

“No.”

“When I die all those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain,”

“Oh, yeah,” said Lou.

Lou looks at Paul Fox’s poster last night and remembers him

Before Paul Fox died, he had 100 copies made of a poster on which he printed some of his memories.

Lou has No 3 of the 100 posters on his wall.

Some of Paul’s memories on the poster are:

“I was in a band called Hit & Run with Malcolm Owen. He came and played me Anarchy in The UK. We both said We can do that and promptly formed a band. The first two songs we wrote were Lobotomy and Rich Bitch. I can also remember Malcolm giving Sid Vicious a good hiding in The Speakeasy for being disrespectful to his bird. In Malcolm’s defence, Sid was an arrogant cunt.

“I also remember Rusty Egan asking me to audition for the Rich Kids, one of Glen Matlock’s bands after the Sex Pistols. I didn’t get the job because my hair was too long and it didn’t suit the band’s image. Midge Ure bagged the job in the end.

“I remember doing a TV show called The Mersey Pirate which was the predecessor to Tiswas. (In fact, it filled the Tiswas summer break in 1979.) This boat went up and down the Mersey and turned round and come back again. The only trouble was we’d been out partying till the early hours that morning and were feeling slightly rough. We boarded at 8.00am and, when the boat turned round, we kept falling out of camera shot.

“Also appearing on the same show were the guy who played Darth Vader and the Jolly Green Giant – Dave Prowse – and Don Estelle and Windsor Davies singing their hit Whispering Grass. We were skinning up a joint and Windsor Davies walked by and said I used to smoke that in the Army. I bumped into Don Estelle years later when we both appeared as ourselves in the line-ups for Never Mind the Buzzcocks. He remembered that day on the Mersey quite well.”

Paul’s final gig with The Ruts in London on 16th July 2007

On the 16th of July 2007, three months before his death on 21st October 2007, Paul Fox headlined a concert in his own honour, teaming up for one final performance with his surviving band mates and with long-time Ruts fan Henry Rollins filling in for original Ruts singer Malcolm Owen who died of a heroin overdose in 1980.

So it goes. Paul is interviewed about it on YouTube.