Meme me up, Scotty

My annoying sister-in-law has tagged me with this meme thing:

because it will annoy him about as much as it does when I get my nieces say to ask, ‘Daddy, where are you going to build the stable?’

and insists I play along. Sigh. Here we go. I have to start with this, from her post:

1) Put the link of the person who tagged you on your blog.
2) Write the rules (I don’t what they are, they must be these five points)
3) Mention 6 things or habits of no real importance about you.
4) Tag 6 persons adding their links directly.
5) Alert the persons that you tagged them.

So here we go.

1. I’ve met Bo Diddley and you haven’t. It was in Hollywood in 1989 on the set of a terrible vampire movie, Rockula, in which he played Axman. I also met his co-star Thomas Dolby and watched him do take after take responding to the line, “Drop the hambone, Stanley.” Meeting Mr Diddley was a bit overwhelming; meeting Mr Dolby wasn’t at all – he’s a lovely chap. The next time I saw him was in the DVD of the cast-of-thousands performance of Pink Floyd’s The Wall in Berlin, a year after the wall came down. Thomas played the Teacher and looked alarmingly like David Benson-Pope. It is worth watching to see Cyndi Lauper as a schoolgirl (talk about whooarr) but also for when Thomas kicks in as David B-P at about 3:00:



2. In the 70s I played guitar in a band with Les White (bass, later of Th’Dudes and seen here in leather trousers in “Be Here Tonight”) and Jenny Morris (later of the Crocodiles and after that a big star in Australia). Positioned directly behind Jenny every night, I had the best seat in the house.

Here she is with Bruno Lawrence (yes, that Bruno Lawrence, drums), Peter Dasent (piano), Tina Matthews (bass), the always amazing Tony Backhouse (left guitar) and Fane Flaws (right guitar), aka the Crocodiles, performing “Tears”. Greatest NZ pop song ever, and as it’s NZ Music Month, this is my response to HomePaddock’s challenge:



3. Of the dozen or so books I’ve published, there’s one I have never seen – the cookbook (it doesn’t have my name on it, for all the obvious reasons and then some). It was a contract job for a major multinational so I have no idea how well it sold (you only get sales info if you get royalties and thus royalty statements, but I usually write for a fee, which is much tidier), but they told me it did all right. It involved muffins, and I have never made a muffin in my life. Apart from the occasional T-shirt incident.

4. In the index to Bill Manhire’s essay collection Doubtful Sounds, there are more references to me than to Christian Cullen. Three to one, from memory. Which would be impressive if he was referring to Christian Cullen the Paekakariki Express, but no, it was Christian Cullen the racehorse.

5. Did I mention that my sister-in-law LaughyKate is the most annoying sister-in-law in the world?

6. And I am too boring to have as many as six “things or habits of no real importance” worth mentioning.

Now I’m supposed to tag more suckers. OK, Chris, Mark and Rob of NZBC, you’re it.