Thompson's Holidays

around the world with The Thompson Twins

THE TINY, whitewashed room let in hardly a breath of the stagnant malarial air from the hot and dusty street outside.

The room's three occupants were growing irritable in the relentless heat. They had been locked in together for more than a week now, and they were beginning to get pretty sick of the sight of one another. And of the sound. And of the smell - yes, especially sick of the goddam' smell! ... But they had a mission to perform and nobody was going to get out of that room until the mission was completed.

"We'd gone to Egypt to be totally isolated," Alannah explains. "The old version of The Thompson Twins had just split up and now there were the three of us, Tom, Joe and myself, and we needed to get some new songs written."

I've heard of people going to great lengths in search of inspiration. But why Egypt, for Chrissakes?

"Well, you see, we've always been London based," Tom explains. "Making London-type music, for London people. It's been the bane of our lives and we wanted to make a break from that. So Egypt seemed a good place to go...

"There were no distractions there," Joe recalls. "Just flies, bad food and sand in your eyes.

"In a place like that, so.. foreign, we all seem to come together, "says Alannah, "Mind you, we do have terrible fights when we try to work together. We throw things at one another and cry. It's all very traumatic.

"But we've worked so long together that we can cope with that. We know how to manipulate one another, you see, and stick the knife in. There's no democracy in the Thompson Twins, we run it on a totally Fascist basis."

Sounds really great.

"Oh, it was," Tom assures me, "We wrote the first four songs on our album while we were in Egypt."

By now, I can see that all you globe-trotting Flexipop! readers are just itching to blow all your hard-earned pennies on a once-in-a-lifetime holiday on the banks of the far, exotic, fly-blown Nile.

But wait a moment-the people at Thompson's Holidays have got lots more wonderful ideas for never-to-be-forgotten vacations in ghastly surroundings.

"After Egypt, we went to the Bahamas," Alannah says, "It was all very wonderful with the sun and the sea going splosh splosh under the veranda..."

Ah yes, now that really does sound idyllic.

"But we got bored," says Joe. "There was nothing to do but swim around and look at different coloured corals."

"So we came back to Britain and set up our studio in the ballroom of a mansion presided over by a crazy woman in Wiltshire," says Alannah. "That was better. It gave its a weird sort of feeling as though The Bomb might be about to go off at any moment on the other side of the hill.

You gotta give it to these kids, they certainly know how to enjoy themselves! I mean, as far as they are concerned, fun is just old hat. This year's big new leisure concept looks like being unadulterated misery, gloom and despondency.

And for the ultimate in A Really Bad Time, Thompson Holidays can recommend nothing more highly than a couple of weeks in grimy, fever-ridden Delhi.

"I went to Delhi a couple of years ago," enthuses Tom, “And l got a terrible gastric disease.

"It was so dirty there and the water was so bad that I thought I was going to die, so I asked someone to take me out of the city and into the hills where it would be cleaner and more healthy.

"I was taken to a monastery where every morning I was just carried out of a bed and dumped in a courtyard, because I couldn't even manage to walk there on my own.

"It was in the courtyard that they did the cooking. After a few days I got so bored of watching them that I started to ask about what they were doing. I learnt quite a bit of Hindi that way. I also found out all about those mysterious looking spices.

"When I got well enough to walk again, I started going to the village to buy ingredients from the merchants there, and to cook various dishes for myself. I became quite good at it. In fact, I eventually got a job as the monastery's cook!"

There you are, you see - you too could become a cook to an Indian Monastery. And you mean to say you thought working in a kibbutz was hip?

It was at this juncture in the conversation that Alannah decided that she ought to put in a word about all the myriad wonders of her homeland, New Zealand. Unfortunately, she couldn't think of any - and so we got around to discussing the Continental countries of Europe instead.

Having had two Number One clubland hits in America and also entered the charts in Britain, surely the Thompsons must now be eager to conquer France and Germany and Holland and ...

"Oh no, I'm not at all bothered about the Continent," Alannah hissed. "I mean, you've only got to go to one of those countries to see what the trouble is - they're full of bloody foreigners, aren't they."

Now there you've hit the nail on the head, Alannah.

"And don't you dare quote me on that!"

Oh, Alannah, as if I would...