An Englishman Adds His Voice To The World

by Neil Bamforth

We all want to be heard don’t we? We don’t? Oh. Must be just me then. A lot of people do want to be heard you know. Mainly people who, rightly or wrongly, feel they haven’t got a voice. They have of course. All they have to do is open their mouths and, unless they have the misfortune to have a disability in that area, their voice emerges.

Of course, many people think that their voice doesn’t count for much and, it has to be said, as I enter the realms of becoming a grumpy and somewhat cynical old man – well, old compared to twenty, thirty, forty or even fifty somethings anyway – I increasingly feel that most of us haven’t really got a voice.

Do the ‘great and the good’ listen? Do the ‘not so great and not so good’ listen? No, do they hell as like.

We are ‘the little people’. We haven’t ascended into Mount Olympus with the politicians and so called leaders. Most of us haven’t had the skill combined with some luck and become millionaires or billionaires.

Most of us are just us. People who are listened to by our friends and family. Sometimes we even feel guilty at what we’ve had our friends and family listening to. We think ‘Oh Christ! Did I really say that?’ and just hope nobody we care about will hold what ever it was we said against us.

Mind you, some of us think ‘bugger it. I’ll say what I think and be damned’. At which point we then act surprised when we are, indeed, damned by some people.

We then decide to be a little more cautious about what we say in future. After all, we didn’t intend to upset or offend anybody.

Some of us – well, me actually – then go waaaaay further than common sense would let us, if we, or more accurately, I, had any common sense at all.

I find myself agreeing to broadcast to any bit of the world that is crazy enough to listen on an internet radio station.

It isn’t the first time either.

It must be over 10 years ago that an internet radio station owner received death threat e-mails from Christian fundamentalists in the USA for allowing a British blasphemer, me, to broadcast on his American internet radio station.

All I did was point out that, if the Bible is correct, God sent a huge flood to drown all evil and he got Noah to build an Ark and rescue two of each animal. Only two? I merely said that I found it difficult to comprehend an evil Giraffe. Clearly, if only two Giraffes went on board, then the other Giraffes left to drown must have been evil. The concept puzzled me.

I then went onto say that none of the fish drowned, simply because, well, they were fish. As such they just carried on swimming about.

So, by the logic of the Bible, the world must now be ruled by evil Haddock.

This didn’t go down particularly well in the US Bible belt for some unfathomable reason and angry e-mails arrived on the station owners computer. As a result, mainly for his safety, I retired from something that was meant to be a bit of fun.

On the plus side, my return is on a British based internet radio station so, I assume, Bible belt America will be happily unaware. The station owner is possibly praying they are too.

This Sunday, August 18th at 8 p.m. UK time, The Drunk Punk Show will return after a long absence. Well? the world’s in such a bloody mess anyway, what harm could I do? – Don’t answer that.

The broadcast begins about 7:30 p.m. UK time with half an hour of ‘warm up’ tunes. The show proper at 8 p.m.

I have no idea what time of the day it will be wherever you are, but, if you have nothing better to do on a Sunday night or, sometime on a Sunday, you are more than welcome to tune in.

I will, of course, apologize profusely the following day.

Music will be from the 60’s, 70’s, 80’s and 90’s with the occasional foray into the present. The occasional bit of waffle from me will occur. Punk music will not feature prominently despite the shows title.

If you are crazy enough to tune in :

You will also discover why British Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, doesn’t know his own name. Why Suzi Quatro is solely responsible for peace in Europe since 1971. Why Sister Sledge want to use a staple gun on a member of the clergy, and why I can claim some form of personal contact with musicians as diverse as Glen Matlock (Sex Pistols), Elvis Costello, Lene Lovitch, Annabella Lwin (Bowwowwow) and former Bowie lead guitarist Mick Ronson.

Mad Mike’s America will, of course, find itself being advertised on regular occasions throughout the show.

Tune in here: www.mixlr.com/sfr and I think you can listen anonymously – which may be a good thing.

There is a chat box where you can join in with any other lunatics listening in, informing me I am about to get arrested. Hopefully not before the show finishes.

Unfortunately the show will be recorded for posterity in the Solid Front Radio archives, thus saving evidence for the prosecution to use against me at a later date.

Never mind eh? It’ll be fun!!

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