Got something to say or just want fewer pesky ads? Join us... 😊

Argh! Immortalised In Print. And Not In A Good Way



Tom Hark Preston Park

Will Post For Cash
Jul 6, 2003
69,884
Always had a fascination for the works of the late twisted Gonzo genius Dr Hunter S Thompson and his arch-collaborator Ralph Steadman. Written about it at great length on NSC before.

http://www.northstandchat.biz/showthread.php?threadid=47662&highlight=steadman

But never expected to end up in Steadman’s new book ‘The Joke’s Over – Memories Of Hunter S Thompson’. Especially not for the kind of disgusting behaviour more normally associated with the good doctor himself.

And I quote, from Steadman’s letter to HST dated 11.5.82:

‘The Ritz article was awful and no good will come of it. I believe Bernard is going to send you a copy of it but I think you would be better not seeing it at all. Because of it, two seedy youths came visiting. While one of them was sick down our toilet the other asked me impertinent questions about how much I earned. Then I engineered a phone call telling me that I had to go out and drive them to the station where I presume they eventually got a train back to London.’

Ladeez & Gennelmen, THPP WAS that seedy youth being sick down the Steadman toilet :down:
 




n1 gull

Well-known member
Jul 25, 2003
4,638
Hurstpierpoint
I adored the great man and of course Steadman.

I only wish I made it on to desert island discs, so I could not only show off my fantastic music taste, but of course take Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas as my book, maybe my luxury item could be some ether...

THPP you should be utterly ashamed of yourself, I am extremely jealous.:bowdown:
 




Tom Hark Preston Park

Will Post For Cash
Jul 6, 2003
69,884
OK, time for closure. This post will make sense to about three people. To anybody else, it's not even a cool story bro. plus its very very long. And probably quite boring. Oh well. What can you do tho eh? :shrug:


Closure


There was only ever one literary event I was going to mark down as a must-attend at this year’s Brighton Festival. ‘RalphSteadman and Ceri Levy – Extinct Boids’. Not that I had the foggiest idea who Ceri Levy was (some kind of film-maker connection to Damon Albarn’s Gorillaz, apparently) nor did I have any intention of shelling out thirty five quid on the Bloomsbury-published book, even if I could have got it signed. Which i could. Meh. Already got one signed Steadman book. Its a copy of his earlier volume Dogs, that he kindly presented me with at our last meeting. It’s inscribed: ‘to [albion_fan] – hope you enjoyed your chunder at Old Loose Court.’ *SIGH*

I won’t recount the shameful tale here again, you can read about it in my journal entry of 3rd January 2007. Or indeed in Steadman’s book ‘The Joke’s Over’ in his letter to Hunter S Thompson of 11.5.82. Something you’d want to draw a veil over forever, or at least apologise to the ends of the earth for. So to cut a long story short I sent Ralph and Anna a letter, plus a copy of the savagely-rejected article we cobbled together in the aftermath of me and The Acker’s doomed visit to the Steadman castle in Kent thirty years ago, if only to prove that we did have serious intent on the day. It just fell apart. Badly.
And yesterday morning earlydoors I went shopping specially to Marks & Sparks and bought a very nice bottle of Sunday Times recommended French bordeaux and some Belgian chocolates and lugged them along to the festival event. As I said in my letter to Ralph and Anna, I hoped we’d had the good grace to apologise on the day of our visit or at least shortly after, though I simply don’t remember. Poor show. So time to say sorry properly. Time to make amends. Ceri Levy came on and gave some kind of intro about the project he was working on, ostensibly something to do with endangered bird species, but very much a vehicle for Ceri Levy so far as I could see. He’d asked Ralph for one drawing and Ralph had responded with over a hundred gorgeously grotesque Steadmanesque full colour sketches of birds both real and imagined. Which pretty much made it a book. Levy then introduced Steadman who entered stage right and muttered, madly grinning, ‘HELLO, or should I say...’ and whipped out a bird warbling device, and promptly warbled away in full-on birdsong mode for a couple of minutes by way of introduction. Mad as eight boxes of frogs, bless, but who would have your deranged genius any other way? The event then proceeded in a charming and shambolic manner, as these things invariably do, half rambling talk, half ham-fisted laptop presentation, messy and endearing. Slick it certainly weren’t, audience and on-stage players locked in some weird kind of what the **** are we doing here embrace. After an hour so it ended, probably, to be honest, to the relief of all concerned. It was announced that Ralph would be signing copies of the book in the foyer ('one signature per person'), whereupon the entire audience made an unseemly scramble for the exit. Probably in case the players decided to do an encore. Levi sort of slunk off, leaving Ralph sat in his chair, on the stage, all by himself,completed lost in reverie, warbling away on his warbling device, totally ignored by everybody else in the room. So what’s a boy to do but sidle up to the stage, wait until the warbling subsided then make my introductions and splutter garbled apologies from thirty years ago. ‘So you’re the one’ said the artist, giving me a kindly smile. He was gracious in the extreme, accepted my gift of wine and chocolates with genuine-looking delight and called over his wife who was conversing in the wings with a melee of friends and relatives. ‘Anna! Anna! Anna!’ Argh! he must have shouted it about a dozen times to my increasing embarassment before he finally caught Anna’s attention. She came over, looking mildly cross with her husband, and I did my apology all over again. Anna was lovely. Said they’d read my letter, there was really no need to apologise, and she didn’t even remember me and The Acker’s day of shame. Which was sweet of her. Or maybe she really didn’t remember. As she said ‘Well, it WAS thirty years ago’. To which there was nothing more to be said really. Thirty years. Seems like yesterday. Shit! Where did my life go?
 






Cheshire Cat

The most curious thing..
Top stream of consciousness ranting. How old were you at the time? Back to the lighthouse.
 





Paying the bills

Latest Discussions

Paying the bills

Paying the bills

Paying the bills

Albion and Premier League latest from Sky Sports


Top
Link Here