It’s funny, the things you can end up talking about in a pub. Like the other day – there we were, me and Captain Sensible, sitting in a pub, a pint of foaming ale in front of each of us, and we started talking naturally enough about Time and Space, the Welfare State, Kajagoogoo, blood sports, ‘Melody Maker’, hair bleach and other such world shattering issues, when, all of a sudden, the Captain startled me with a controversial statement concerning courgettes – “You can’t beat a well-stuffed one,” he said, illustrating his point with a deft and graphic movement of his hands.

Mopping up the half pint of ale which this movement had caused to be deposited into my lap, I listened with barely concealed indifference for the conclusion of this bizarre assertion.

“Lentils are the things,” he went on, “You’ve got to stuff your lentils into your courgettes, you see. It’s not as easy as it sounds.”

Who said it sounded easy…?

“The way to do it is to scoop out the insides of the courgette, mix it up with the lentils and then stuff it all back inside again. It’s the stuffing that’s the hard bit.”

“I’ll drink to that,” I said, which I did.

By this stage in the proceedings, my brain was starting to think double, which may explain why I was offering no opposition when the Captain started babbling on about a dream he’d had in which Nick Beggs of Kajagoogoo had invaded his kitchen and scoffed all his salad.

“Fancy another drink?” someone said.

“Mine’s a large one,” someone else said – I think it might have been me.

FROCK HORROR!

By the time my eyes and brain had started getting back on speaking terms, I discovered to my confusion, that Captain Sensible had started telling me all about his frocks. I couldn’t work out the significance of all this, but at least it seemed to be an improvement on courgettes, so I let him go on.

“…yes, well, there was that ballet dress I wore for Happy Talk,” he was saying, “That was pretty silly, I suppose, though it isn’t the only dress I’ve got. I like women’s clothes. I think they’re so much more flamboyant than men’s and, actually, to tell you the truth, it’s a real turn-on. I like wearing women’s clothes, I admit it!”

Yes, well, don’t we all. But the problem is, finding the right occasions to wear it.

“Oh, that’s no problem,” said the Captain, “I wear them whenever I feel like it, both in private and in public. I’ve got a nurse’s costume and a girl guide’s costume and…”

All of a sudden my empty glass had refilled itself. I looked up and saw that Captain Sensible had now dispensed with the topic of women’s clothing. In fact he had dispensed with the topic of clothing of any gender and, with a little encouragement (I secretly feared) might even have been persuaded to dispenser with his own clothing there and then (which would have been a very reckless course of action with Closing Time still so far away)…

STRIPPED FOR ACTION

“I believe in nudity,” he said, “The human body is a good thing and nothing to be ashamed of. I’ve appeared nude on stage loads of times – and I don’t always do it for titillation either. You can bet there’ll always be a couple of nude gigs on any Damned tour.”

“Could be a shock,” I said, “For any dear, sweet little old ladies who mistakenly turn up expecting ‘Happy Talk’ and other such hits from the films.”

“They’re funny things, Damned gigs,” Sensible mused, “You get some funny people in the audience. You get some funny people on the stage, come to that.

“For some reason the people who come to see us seem to like spitting at us. Nobody ever throws their knickers at us, which is a big shame. I could do without the spitting. I’d rather have the knickers. Preferably not from the same people who spit at us, though, if you see what I mean.

“Mind you, I wouldn’t say The Damned is the best behaved group around, so maybe that’s got something to do with the sort of audiences we get?

“A Damned tour is a strange thing. We tend to wreck things. I’ve smashed up so many guitars on stage you wouldn’t believe it. Do you realise, I could have walls full of them by now if I hadn’t wrecked them all…

“Another thing we wreck a lot is hotels. Like the time we set fire to the curtains in an hotel in Le Havre. We threw them out through the window and just stood there watching them blazing in the street below. The management of the hotel called the police and we were all sent off to prison for two days. We even had to sell the drums in order to raise bail.

“I’ve run up enormous bills in hotels by doing silly things like that. At least the hotels we wreck are French, though, not British.”

Sounds like just the sort of humorous act of destruction you’d expect from a wacky mega-star like Captain Sensible. But another pint of that good ol’ foaming oblivion arrived and with it came that strange alcohol-inspired nostalgia for times past (I’m sure all you Proust aficionados will know exactly what I mean), and, for a moment, the voice of peaceful, law abiding Ray Burns (the Captain’s alter-ego) was speaking out against the recklessness of youth –

“I don’t believe in taking risks,” he said, “Like riding a motorbike without a crash helmet. that’s very naughty and very silly. I know, because I did it myself a few years ago and skidded and crashed. I could have killed myself but luckily I didn’t ‘cause I’m as tough as old boots.

“Actually , motorbikes frighten me a bit. Maybe that’s their attraction? I’m easily frightened and I enjoy it.

RIDE INTO TERROR

“I’m terrified of heights, it’s a kind of phobia, and I’m scared silly by rollercoasters so, naturally, whenever I go anywhere near a fairground, the first thing I do is buy a ticket for the highest, scariest rollercoaster I can find. I scream louder than any girl.

“The best ride I ever went on was a thing called the Demon Drop in the States. It’s like a kind of lift that you strap yourself into. The lift the goes up, just as any lift in a tall building would. But when it gets to the very top it suddenly just drops as though the cable’s snapped and the thing’s gone out of control. But then, just as you get to the bottom, and what seems like certain death, the lift straightens itself out again and rolls along the track until it stops.

“Take it from me, I’ve never been so terrified as the time I went on the Demon Drop. I’m just glad I was wearing my brown trousers.”

Captain Sensible is a difficult bloke to sum up in a few words – especially when you’re still suffering from the ravages of a large lunch, all liquid. He’s a man of many interests: nudity, women’s clothing, knickers, getting scared out of his skull and, of course, courgettes.

Any lesser mortal might shrink at the thought of having such intimate details of his life revealed in print. But not the Captain – “You needn’t worry about embarrassing me,” he says, “Embarrassment is not even a word in my vocabulary.

“It’s not a word that means anything to me. Not like Okapi, for instance. Now that’s what I call a good word! Do you know, there are some amazing things you can do with an Okapi…”

And so there are. I only wish I had the space to tell you about them…