Monday
I got up at about none o'clock and had a shower. I have a shower
every morning. Then I went downstairs and had a bowl of Special
K and a banana followed by eggs and bacon which my mum cooked. I
really like bananas. I must eat a dozen a day. After that I went
out to meet my friend, Ivor Craig, who is designing some clothes
for the group. He's making up some suits and some trousers. Martin
is going in for a sort of peasant-look with a little Dutch cap.
Everything that we're having made can be taken apart so that the
trousers become shorts and the jackets become sleeveless tops.
In the evening I stayed in, watched telly and read my favourite
magazines - Flexipop! (and another which shall remain nameless).
Tuesday
I had a bath for a change this morning. After I'd had a couple
of cups of tea to try to wake me up I went into the living room
to play a video game called The Munchman. I played that for
about an hour. My highest score so far is 7,600, which is quite
good and coincidentally the same number of bananas I've eaten this
year so far. The rest of the day I spent eating bananas and playing
records - mostly Simple Minds as well as Spandau Ballet's new album
which I think is better than their first one.
Jo, my girlfriend, and I then went into town to buy lots of deodorants,
hairspray and bananas. I have to stock up on them for when we go
on tour. Later on I met Andy and Martin and we went to see the final
version of the video for our single The Meaning of Love,
which looks good - quite funny.
Wednesday
We got up very early in the morning because we had to check in
at Heathrow Airport to fly to Paris where we were due to do a couple
of TV shows. We arrived at the studios for the first one in the
afternoon and were told that this programme was the most important
TV show in the whole of France. In fact it was the pits. It was
all made in a warehouse. The TV show itself was like a sort of French
'Top of the Pops'. But it was all dedicated to this big French star
- I can't remember what her name was. We had to line up with bowler
hats in front of our faces and at the beginning of the show, an
announcer called out your name - "And tonight we present...",
and you had to throw away your hat and show who you were. They went
along the line and everybody got thunderous applause. Then it came
to my turn and there was silence except for a few people we'd brought
from England with us.
We arrived on time, at 12 o'clock, but there were no cameras or
crew. We went to have a bite to eat then returned at three o'clock.
They told us they wanted us to record six songs. They took about
three hours to do the first song. The second song took slightly
less and the third song took about an hour. By the time we came
to the fifth song it was 11.30 pm and since the studio lights were
due to be turned off at midnight they had to film it in next to
no time. The camera man was jumping about all over the place trying
to get us into shot. We didn't have time to do the sixth song because
the caretaker turned the lights off. One of the most embarrassing
things about working in France was that we had to keep arguing about
how to pronounce the name of the group. We kept telling them, it's
pronounced Depech-ey! Then all these French people kept saying,
"No it isn't. It's pronounced Depesh!" I felt a
bit stupid about that.
Thursday
We had a more civilised TV show to do today. They told us it was
the most important TV show in France. It seemed like I'd heard that
before somewhere. But before going to the studio we had to do some
interviews for French magazines. French Journalists tend to ask
even more boring questions than they do in Britain -things like
Where did you get your name? What's that stud in your nose for?
and "Are you a New Romantic?"
After the show we went to dinner with the people from our record
company in France. It was horrible. The soup was like water, then
there were snails, and lots of garlic. I kept telling them I didn't
like garlic but they kept putting loads of it on everything anyway,
including the six bananas I had for sweet.
Friday
We flew direct to Manchester to rehearse for Peter Powell's show.
I went around town first and bought the B52s album, 'Mesopotamia',
and another Simple Minds record. Then I went to my hotel room to
try to have a sleep, but I didn't sleep very well. We got to the
studio to rehearse at 4 pm. It all seemed to go pretty well. Afterwards
Jo and I went back to the hotel and had a meal. I had prawn cocktail,
which is one of my favourites, then I had a fillet steak without
garlic, and for dessert I had a fresh-fruit salad with loads of
bananas. Jo ate a salad and nothing else because she's on a diet.
Saturday
I had to get up at 5.30am to prepare for Peter Powell's TV show.
When I got to the studio the first thing I had to do was to go and
have my make-up put on. Can you imagine what it's like at 7.30 in
the morning, when you're still half asleep, having this person slapping
make-up all over you? Then we were on air live at 9.30 doing 'See
You' at the beginning of the show. Around 12.30 pm we got a train
to London, and from there we went home to Basildon, arriving there
at about 5pm. The first thing I did was to go to sleep after eating
a couple of bananas.
Sunday
A day of leisure. I got up quite late - about 11 o'clock. Lazed
about the house for the rest of the day playing records, eating
Sunday dinner, teasing my two little brothers and stuffing bananas.
In the evening I went to the pictures with Jo to see "Mad
Max 2", and we sat in the back row. It was quite good.
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