BEYOND THE IMPLODE 3 - BRITISH AIRWAYS 0

I know, I know. August marks the anniversary of the death that stunned the nation - a death few of us will forget. They can hold as many inquiries as they like, but we'll probably never know what really happened on that dark, windy night.

Yet still, we ask ourselves - did Rudolf Hess actually throw a seven in Spandau, or was he snuffed by the SAS? Oh I couldn't care less to be honest. Bloody nazis - parachuting into our fields and ruining good, honest, wholesome Scottish crops with their dirty jackboots! As for the whole Diana crash thing 10 years after - man, those were grim days. All the radio stations pumping out maudlin bilge by Mozart; idiots queuing up in a sea of flowers, just to pop a snotbubble over the book of condolences; necrophiliac royalist lizard Nicholas Witchell rubbing his claws together on TV and smugly announcing that all forms of fun and laughter were officially CANCELLED; Japanese tourists beaten up for looking at teddy bears the wrong way. When Spurs played Fulham in the FA Cup qualifier and the Yid Army started chanting, to the tune of 'Que Sera Sera', Your son is dead...Fayed! it felt as sweet as summer rain. At last - glimmers of blatant disrespect and cuntishness! Operation Pacification had failed! FINALLY...BRITAIN WOULD BE SAVED!

Yeah yeah, as if. Anyway, enough about the dead, they get way too much coverage. Instead, let's show some respect to the living and review the NEURAL OHMLETTE shindig which took place at the Social in Little Portland Street last night. Jim Backhouse and Magz Hall had just come back from their honeymoon in Italy and were spinning the tunes. Unfortunately, the decks were positioned right next to the most stomach-churning toilet in London. Say what you like about the smoking ban being great cos it means your clothes don't reek of fags the next day - but do you really want to smell like Abbey Mills instead? OK, so the rancid stench of decomposing shite might not give you second-hand cancer, but Jesus, the pong was enough to knock a greyhound sideways. Despite this olfactory handicap, Jim and Magz soldiered on with the persistence of Tommy Vance (RIP) dodging a blitzkrieg of piss-filled lemonade bottles at Reading Festival. Now, a lot of frivolous blogs have claimed that Jim's "sold out" by "marrying a bird", but I can prove the gossip-mongers wrong, as he spun Vice Versa's Sheffield electro classic Riot Squad, as well as about 98 other songs I've never heard before.

First act onstage was JAMES III AND THE PURITAN. You should have seen this cat's mask - like something Jim Henson would have designed if he'd wanted to make a show called DEVIL MOTHS ON TRIPLE BAD ACID. If James III ever gets bored of making music and wants to become a 'plushophile serial killer', he should definitely take the mask with him on his nocturnal culls, it'd make for some pretty far out photofits. I think he was starting to overheat a bit towards the end, though. He was playing what looked like a load of samplers assembled into a giant guitar, which spat out vocals and doomy electro / techno. I assume 'The Puritan' was the other bloke who got up on stage and recited something about 'filthy steel' for one number. Sorry I haven't mentioned the music much, but I was so taken by the mask. I was also wondering whether it was worth trying to steal a lead from the stage, as I need one for my Yamaha, but nobody there seemed arrogant enough to warrant such a selfish, pathetic act of equipment theft.

The headliner was BISHI, who I presume was playing a sitar. Look, don't have a go at me if it wasn't a sitar. I don't know jack about instruments or technology. The only 'instrument' I ever owned before blagging this Yamaha was a Zenta guitar. Yes, that's right! Oh, excuse me? You've never heard of the mighty Zenta? That legendary sunburst plywood plank they brought out in the late 1970s for folk who couldn't afford a Woolworths Top 20? My former brother in law actually bought one which he offloaded onto me when I was 13. I managed to learn one poxy Ramones riff before the damn thing zapped me with an electric shock. I carried it around one day in a black bin bag, cos I thought that was what 'guitar heroes' did, but all that happened was the bag split open. It really was a primitive piece of shit - but if you wanted free ECT, it knocked Rickenbackers sideways. Whatever happened to the mysterious Zenta Guitar Corporation? Who were they? I chucked it on a skip after the last string came off.

Back to Bishi - she was playing this massive electric sitar, anyway, over electropop rhythms. She's got a pair of lungs on her and she knocked out some class tunes with soaring vocals about trawling around London in twilight (or so I thought the lyrics went) like a nightbus banshee from another dimension. She'd gone for more of a "spectral bacofoil" look. She also read out her myspace address, which is myspace.com/bishimusic, so why don't you go there and have a listen, instead of asking me everything.

(DISCLAIMER - she was much better live than the stuff that's on her site)

I don't think anyone can recall the precise genesis of 'Woofah' magazine - except me. Paul Meme kind of thinks it was his idea, or at least dictated to him by God during some Wailing Souls gig where he drank so much wine he wept like a grasshopper. But no, I'll tell you where it started - John Eden burbling in a pub. "I HAVE THIS MASTERPLAN," he began, doing the index finger-jabbing-the-table-on-every-syllable thing he does all the time. "A MAGAZINE CATERING FOR GRIME, DANCEHALL AND DUBSTEP. WHAT WE'LL DO IS..."

I'm sorry, I truly am. One of the seminal moments in the history of fanzine culture. The DIY publishing equivalent of that time Hitler had one too many in the bierhall and started his "Jews this, Jews that" rant. The hands of history on our backsides. And what did I do? I drifted off. I caught the end of the odd sentence..."TOTALLY INDEPENDENT", "NO ADVERTISING", "HONEST REVIEWS"...but I'd left my body about 5,000 miles behind. Oh come on, who actually knocks out fanzines anymore? It seemed John had been infected by yet another of these "pub ideas", the kind of rot that makes sense after a few drinks but has about as much chance as materialising as Maddie McCann ((I bet you a tenner the parents killed her. I'm not joking either)) - like "Let's record an electro version of Tube Disaster", "Let's break into London Zoo and liberate the flamingos", "Why don't we set up our own catering business and go and punt this out of date bacon to revellers at the V festival", "I love you, let's get married", and so on.

Do you know what I pondered, reader, as John frothed at the mouth and slammed his palm against the now Stella-drenched table, a thick vein bulging at his temple and all manner of obscenities gushing from his mouth? Whatever happened to all those flyers that they used to distribute with fanzines in the early 90s? You know, the mass-xeroxed adverts for new product by bands like Cosmonauts Hail Satan or Pink Turds in Space. Did anyone actually ever buy the Pink Turds in Space LP for £4, on the strength of a small scrap of paper with a PO Box address and a cartoon? All those 'distros' scattered across the land, selling fanzines like "Dregs", "Duhhh", "Concerned Muthas". Sending off 50p wrapped in a piece of cardboard, to get a 32-page hand-scrawled black and white zine reporting on the 'scene' in Telford and Wrekin. Kids with nothing to do and nothing to say, saying it anyway. Hundreds of bored exiles, just like me. And another bundle of flyers through the flap. The new issue of "Eat Shit And Die" (number 2) now available. And more Pink Turds in Space flyers. Really, has anyone ever heard them? Is that record worth £100 nowadays?

What happened to these flyers? There was an unwritten agreement that whenever you corresponded with anyone in the 'zine network' you had to recycle the flyers. Spread them around the country like confetti, an anarchic, dislocated marketplace. Caveman 'myspace'. Just as long as you didn't mix up the Class War ones with the Riot Grrrl queer poetry ones. I felt like such a voyeur, paying 50p to pry into fellow teenage heads, reading their angry rants and reports on BNP activity in South Shields and confessions about female masturbation, sexist comments on the bus and loneliness. No, I don't want to check out Pink Turds in Space, thanks. Matt Fuller and Graham Harwood bastardising graphics, just so I could get to gawp at blasphemous Homocult propaganda and conspiracy theories about Prince Charles slaughtering children as part of his demented occult rites. A 4-track demo by an angry industrial rock band called Manfat (Have you ever thought / there's too much traffic / have you ever thought / there's too many people / What we need is...a big bomb!) What became of them? Who were they? These days, you'd be able to click on their site and find out what their favourite films were, back then they were just voices and humming frets and drum thuds on a Maxell C60.

Where did the flyers go? Did they wear out from overposting and disintegrate? Did people just get bored of seeing them and throw them in the bin? That's a lot of flyers to throw away, regardless. Where did Pink Turds in Space xerox the adverts for their album? Did they do it for free? Oh, it was all bollocks, in retrospect. It was...

"SO WHAT DO YOU THINK?" John squawked. I was back in the pub, rain slid down the windowpanes, smokers huddled outside, my ugly mug blinked back at me from the glassy black sheen of a fresh pint of stout.

"...yeah, it's cool" I began

"YOU'VE NOT LISTENED TO A WORD!" Eden roared. "SITTING THERE, DREAMING UP MORE LIES TO FOOL THE PEOPLE! BLOGS ARE SO 2005! PRINTED MATTER'S MAKING A COMEBACK, IT'S TIME TO RAISE THE ZINE, TO RECLAIM THE A5 FORMAT! FUCK COMPLACENT POSTS ABOUT THE FIRST THING THAT COMES INTO YOUR HEAD! HAVE YOU GOT THE GUTS TO ACTUALLY PAY TO GET YOUR MESSAGE OUT THERE? DO YOU BELIEVE IN YOUR OWN WORDS? DO YOU? DO YOU?"

"OK! OK!" I gave in. "It's a bloody great idea. I certainly wouldn't have the brains or patience to pull it off" (John really perked up and was all smiles at this point) "What are you going to call it?" I asked.

Another historic moment. The flutter of a butterfly's wing in 13th century China blows Eric Clapton's son out of the window. "IT'S GOING TO BE CALLED...TWEETAH" he announced.

Do you know - damn me if I can remember what possessed me, but I ended up countering, "Woofer sounds better".

"I'VE HAD A MUCH BETTER IDEA!" John yelled. "LET'S CALL IT WOOFER! OR WOOFAH! YES, WOOFAH! THAT WAY I CAN CONVINCE MYSELF THAT I CAME UP WITH THE NAME AND NOT YOU, BECAUSE YOU SPELT IT WRONG!"

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is how Woofah zine came to be. It's being published in August. Hilariously, it was meant to be published in Catford, but somehow got diverted to Ireland - it's a long story, and I'm not the man to tell it, especially when I could be nibbling on pork scratchings and downing stout down some warm boozer. But check this shit out

www.myspace.com/woofah

|

1) Find a major branch of your bank - one located in one of the main city / business areas is best. Wave around a credit card statement and start complaining to the staff about inaccurate entries.

2) When the bank staff explain that they can't help and that you'll have to contact the credit card company directly, say "I have done -about 5 times. From now on I'm going to bill you for every minute I'm put on hold. I don't see why you can't call them for me now and resolve this."

3) The staff will tell you to go into one of the private side rooms and use the phone inside to sort it out yourself. Hey presto - free phoneline. Call who you like, the bank's picking up the tab.

Top tip - do hold and look at your statement while talking - if they see you with your feet on the desk, laughing down the line, they'll get suspicious.

1) SHIT-EATING ALLIGATORS

Grown men - grown fucking men with professional jobs -I'm talking doctors and lawyers - used to sit around in private clubs discussing the giant alligators that supposedly roamed the sewers of Hampstead and Belsize Park. This has to be the most pathetic London urban myth ever spawned. Oh, that the toffee-nosed denizens of Hampstead Village HAD encountered 800lb of scaley green death! Luckily, I haven't heard anyone come out with this rubbish for years. If they do, tell them to fuck off. It's the urban myth equivalent of a 'Knock Knock' joke.

2) THE MENSTRUATING AUSSIE SLAG

"My mate met this Aussie girl down a club in Shoreditch...they were getting on really well, she seemed really cool...anyway, he went back to her place, and she turned round and said, 'I'm on the rags at the moment, so you'll have to woof me up the shitter'."

I've heard this from THREE separate people. Now, EITHER these people are all mates with the same guy, who's obviously misconstrued this incident as being the stuff of immortal anecdote. OR it's yet another urban myth, spreading like herpes across the watering holes of London. Or maybe it's a line from some obscure, cult film and these sneaky liars think they're being clever. Or maybe I just don't meet enough Australian girls.

3) NATIONAL FRONT AIDS SYRINGES

Back when everyone was panicking about AIDS and thought you could catch it off toilet seats or cheese rolls, a hundred urban myths went into circulation about the fatal condition. The most idiotic one was that the NF were somehow affixing the tips of syringes, dipped in AIDS-infected blood, to the backs of their propaganda posters -meaning you risked a death sentence if you tried to tear them down.

I'm not sure how this rumour ever started. Did it originate from the NF themselves? If so, it was tantamount to admitting that their members had a reservoir of AIDS-infected blood on tap, which isn't very 'master race'. It did make them seem really sinister though, like a shadowy underground organisation of highly-skilled, blood-sucking assassins and toxic terrorists - IF YOU WERE SEVEN YEARS OLD. Which I was.

There was a similar rumour about prostitute phonebox cards. Woe betide the moralist who tore TS Tony's details from the window, only to find themselves jabbed by the, er, non-existent AIDS spike of death.

4) THE HIGHGATE VAMPIRE

Ditto number one, but about a vampire prowling Highgate Cemetery. Admittedly, this one was quite funny, culminating in some right-wing nutcase being jailed for fiddling with a corpse, and a kid-fiddling magician accidentally burning down his flat during a Pan-summoning rite. The vampire was allegedly killed, or exorcised, or whatever you call twatting a vampire. However, it's more likely that the vampire was actually the reanimated corpse of Karl Marx, and as we all know, Marxism never dies.

5) I WRECKED THE BLUE PETER GARDEN

If all the people who've claimed responsibility for trashing the Blue Peter Garden really had been there in 1983, there'd have been queues of teenage vandals stretching down to Shepherds Bush tube station.

This myth has become the Holy Grail for liars and braggarts, with third-rate footballers, shit rock stars and halfwit TV presenters all pretending to have played a part in wrecking the venue of the awful children's show. The real wreckers are hardly going to come forward and say "Actually, we did it and here's the proof", and end up getting charged. Which makes the people pretending to have been there utter cowards.

6) I NICKED A TRAIN

I don't know where this one came from either, but every couple of years, you always meet someone who tells you they once nicked a train when they were younger. They literally walked into the driver's carriage (which was conveniently empty and unlocked), flicked on the switch (it's always 'the switch') and took the train to the next station. After knowing full well how to bring the train to a halt, the prankster was collared by the station master and handed to the police. The police, conveniently, gave the offender a slap on the wrist and let him (I've never heard a woman tell this story) off with a caution - but it was well funny! OH FUCK OFF, you never even nicked a Mars bar.

7) THE MUSLIMS NEARLY SNUFFED ME OUT!

And all of you "Shit, I would have been on that tube!" types who work and live nowhere near the blast zones can fuck off with your "stoic" recollections of 7/7.

8) KENTUCKY FRIED RAT

One of the cretinous relatives of the idiot who married my sister (proof of his stupidity couldn't be more evident) once came up with this old chestnut - a visit to KFC, then on to the cinema, the crunchy, unpleasant tasting meal in the dark, and then discovering that the box contains a rat's head, floating in a pool of grease.

Yeah yeah, only everyone's heard this a million times. I'm not denying that it's easy to mistake the shit that KFC sells the public for genuine rat. But, if urban myths 5 to 7 highlight a tragic, juvenile desire for attention based on fantastic daydreams of action and machismo, this myth's more of a masochistic cry for help. That's what I'd say if I was a psychologist, anyway. The funniest thing is that the people who come out with this one and expect you to be shocked and impressed don't realise that the bloke behind the counter probably lobbed a wad of watery jizz into their coleslaw - which they heartily smeared all over their fries, while working out which urban myth to adopt next.

9) THE DOG THAT SAYS 'SAUSAGES'

This isn't common at all, but some complete cunt from an advertising agency tried to bullshit me that his grandmother's pet terrier used to say 'sausages'. I pointed out that the dog that says 'sausages' was a 20-year old story from a deeply shit BBC 'current affairs' programme, and he said "Oh, was it?" and looked slightly uncomfortable - but not nearly uncomfortable and ashamed enough to ponder the emptiness of his existence and to do the right thing with a razor blade in a piping hot bath - more's the pity. He's never invited me out for a drink since. Fucking loser.

So anyway - you remember how I was on about that 'drug awareness for schools' book SOLVENTS? The one with the wicked looking skinhead with facial tattoos on the front cover? Well, SOLVENTS was the one to flick through if you wanted to get that 80s punk look down pat, instead of coming across like a plastic who has his hair dyed by his MUMMY. But there were other great books in this series. AMPHETAMINES was kind of like a fucked up mod/punk version of 'Vogue' - that's if you dug girls with 1,000-yard Hanoi kill stares, pink socks, Chelsea Girl haircuts and whizz zits around their lips. ALCOHOL was pretty crap, save for a picture of a dread passed out in front of a sound system with a bottle of Captain Morgan. HEROIN didn't even try to go in for subcultural portraits, instead featuring a skeletal Chinese man who, the reader was informed, hadn't eaten or taken a shit in eight weeks.

Look, these were desperate times, OK? Anyway, this all came to mind when I was listening to some old punk tunes the other night. Since giving up smoking, I've rediscovered my love for songs that only last 90 seconds. First up was Never Been To Borstal by THE TERRORWAYS - a brilliant thrashalong with the singer bemoaning the fact that his mates all think he's a well-behaved wuss because he hasn't been sent to youth prison - when it's actually because the cops are too slow to catch him! "Never been to borstal...but I never stop tryin'!" he rages. Then I listened to Latex Love by VICE SQUAD. This is Beki Bondage singing about tying her boyfriend up and sticking him in a cupboard. Again, the 20th century - you had to be there to realise how desperate things were. Incidentally, my one and only experience with bondage was a complete disaster. The girl I was going out with wanted to try dominating me and I was young and naive enough to think this'd fling open the gates to an exciting new cosmos of sexual adventure and amoral anarchic experience. She agreed to come round my pad on a Saturday. She turned up without any 'bondage paraphernalia' whatsoever. "Pretend you've got handcuffs on," she unhelpfully suggested. "Just stretch your arms back!" She wanted to blindfold me but the nearest thing I had was a Tottenham Hotspur scarf. She bound it round my head and got on top. Suddenly, I had We're loyal Spurs supporters, and we go to every game...and the Spurs go marching on! Ohhhh...GLORY GLORY TOTT'NUM 'OTSPUR! by CHAS AND DAVE in my head and I burst out laughing. I then had to spend 45 minutes explaining to my distraught would-be dominatrix that I wasn't laughing AT HER, honest. In fact, the only remotely servile thing that happened was I made a cup of tea to try and placate her as she sobbed and repeatedly asked "Do you still love me?" And that was bondage. Latex Love isn't that great but, by Shambo, it beats the fuck out of whatever Capital Radio's churning out as I type.

Funnily enough, has anyone seen Foot & Mouth's back? See, I told you these pulp stories were memetic hexes. Surely this is a sign of LORD SHAMBO'S WRATH? Ah well - at least it'll give Gobshite Gloria Hunniford plenty to mull over on The Heaven and Earth Show this Sunday. Temple bulls indeed!

FLUX OF PINK INDIANS were a load of rubbish, but they did have one good song, Tube Disaster, which has the singer drooling over the 1975 Moorgate crash. For foreigners, this was when some tube driver's wife dumped him and he decided to plough the train through a wall in a fit of nihilistic turmoil. I've been on at Jim XYLITOL to do an electro cover version of this, but I don't think he's interested, so I might well do it myself, seeing as I've recently gained access to a Yamaha and a distortion box. If anyone wants to sing on it, drop me a line. Doppelganger can do the artwork, if he doesn't mind being paid in liberated office stationery.

BEST ITALO DISCO SINGLE OF THE WEEK

People like to yap a lot about the qualities that define a REAL MAN. These include: a fondness for football, a preference for eating meat, ability to handle emergencies in a calm and collected manner, the capability to drink 247 pints in one night and being able to show your emotions by blubbing like a big baby the minute life doesn't go your way. Sorted? What tosh - I'll tell you what defines a real man, connected to his true inner self - LATENT PYROMANIA. Oh come on, stop fooling yourselves. We all want to see cars torched, flames licking the sky, billows of black smoke rolling towards us like waves of toxic death. We hold the same fascination with the glow of a bloody great conflagration as did our ancestors when they sat around gibbering and wanking in caves.

Men with the 'arsonist' gene are easy to spot at barbecues. While the usual 'Mr Smartarse' of the occasion is trying to impress everyone by getting the fire started (and knocking raw discount sausages onto the charcoal), the arsonist is the one who, when the flame shoots through the grill, glances at it longingly, then suddenly darts his eyes towards the house next door, and then back again. It's a reflex response, we can't help it. Don't mean nothing. Don't get in a strop about it.

No, it's the one who tries to light the barbecue - he's the one you want to watch out for. I mean! What sort of man volunteers for this task? A show-off, that's what. Starting the barbecue is a highly arcane occult ritual - a wretched attempt to forge a Promethean sense of self-importance. What the lighterman is saying is - I am a thief of fire. I am providing the means of sustenance for this tribe. I must therefore be accorded respect. It's a stab at leadership and group dominance, and it sucks. Mark this creep well for, behind his jovial anecdotes and self-deprecating comments about burnt food,lousy weather and botched barbecue attempts of yore, lurks a vicious, scheming little Hitler who would literally massacre entire continents if it helped to bolster his festering, shitty ego by the width of a pea.

And what's all this buying charcoal and expensive little grill kits with lids and wheels? Ah, just hack the side off an Asda trolley like everyone else, willya? Bloody posers. I also find that petrol helps - like, duuhh.

Anyway, I was considering all this when listening to Firelight by GHECKO, an arsonist's wet dream of a disco anthem, with some of the coolest vocals to ever emerge from Europe. I saw it burning! the bloke purrs over his luscious Yamaha DX7 and Drumulator sonic stew, no doubt recalling a youth spent torching beach huts and ice cream stalls in Rimini.

Ah, to be 17 again! Bondage, amphetamine abuse and arson! You teenagers need to seriously log off and go and do some crazy stuff instead of reading this shit. OK, sorry, I really will mention some current records instead of a load of 80s tat next time round.

(((I am The King of Death)))
(((My breath is the foetid plague that erupts from sewers and drains)))
(((My stomach is a graveyard for children and cows)))
(((My steed is a giant paedo spider from the Styx)))
(((I shit broken glass and piss tabasco)))
(((I roam the streets at night and I tap on your window)))
(((I bring chlamydia in sacks, fresh from the rabid whores of Babylon)))
(((I am the hospital swab-stained sky outside Stalag 13)))
(((I pluck womens' heads from their necks and use their jawbones as cockrings)))
(((I smoke crack from the snapped vertebrae of girl guides)))
(((I prowl abortion clinic bins when I get the 'munchies')))
(((I am the estate agent's smile and the wifebeater's tears)))
(((I am the cold steel stink of hangover guilt)))
(((OL' SATYR OF TUPELO, PUKE THEE HENCE)))

8=====D - - - -

Elvis Presley didn't die in 1977. Why so sure? Because I was one of the many young infants he targeted during his spate of child abduction attempts in North West London between 1980 and 1982. I'll never forget the day the balding guy with the ponytail, the NHS coke bottle glasses and the cheesecloth shirt pulled over in the Datsun with blacked out windows, opened the door and told me my mummy was in hospital.
"I know, she's having her thyroids out," I replied.
"Good," he gurgled, "she told me to pick you up - if you don't get in the car, she'll die, and your daddy will stop loving you!"
"Promise?" I asked, savouring the walK BACk home as if I'd just tunnelled my way outta the bowels of Colditz.
The bastard then jumped out and tried to bundle me into the back of the banger. What I saw sprawled across the backseat turned my blood to steaming chunks of yellow snow. Elvis himself - his quiff unwashed and matted, his white jumpsuit stained and torn, lolling in a sea of burger wrappers - told me I had a pretty mouth. I screamed and, luckily, an ex-soldier OAP who'd once seen the Angel of Mons came racing across the street, waving his walking stick like a baton. Presley's co-pervert 'chauffeur' dropped me to the tarmac, threw himself behind the wheel and sped off.

I wasn't the only kid Elvis and his foul henchman tried to snatch. Ach! How I remember that dreadful couple of years, that period we dubbed 'The Terror'. "Elvis is dead, quit fooling around," our teachers reproached us, our older siblings sneered at us. But we knew. Me and Sheilagh knew, we knew he was out there, trying to snatch kids. Wanting to shove his filthy hound dog up our blue suede shoes. To pump us with his amphetamine-ravaged manfat until it dribbled from our ears, before grinding us into mince and using us as burger filling. Curling his lip into a sneer and chuckling "Uh huh! Pleazhedtuhmeetzha!" as he shat our digested remains down the toilet.

My name is Martin. I maintain a blog called 'Beyond the Implode Blog'. 25 years on, I still have to clean up Presley's mess. I try to heal the scarred minds, rescue the damaged survivors from those whirlpools of inner torment. I received an email the other day from "Suzie":

I'd forgotten about it until I was 13 and we went to Margate...by the pier, there was a stall selling T-shirts...and I saw his face..that evil, sick leering face...I just broke down. My uncle Brian was asking what was wrong, and I told him, and he just laughed and said "I know Elvis wasn't very good, but surely he's not worth crying over!" and I tried to tell him, YOU FOOL / YOU BLIND FOOL / CAN'T YOU SEE / IT'S HIM / THE ONE IN THE BACK OF THE DATSUN / THE ONE WHO DANGLED HIS KETCHUP AND CHEESE-SMEARED PENIS IN MY FACE IN 1981 ////TOLD ME THAT IF I DIDN'T GET IN THE BACK WITH HIM, HE'D SEND SPIDERS TO KILL ME IN BED / THAT'S YOUR KING. I can't even look at Lisa Marie Presley, she's got the same evil maw.


"I WILL DRAG THE BEAST OF GRACELAND TO HIS OWN ROCK N ROLL NUREMBERG"

THE VERY NAME BTI: The term 'Beyond the Implode' was originally coined by "Doctor" Kenneth Nganga in 1975. He was a philosopher or, as I prefer to say, a 'thinker' from Camberwell. He was also a bogus scientist. 'Beyond the implode' was something to do with a study of quaquaversal light shards following the implosion of a star, but I've never read the full 1,987-page typewritten document he produced on this matter, so I can't elaborate too much - sorry.

In 1983, Nganga claimed to have discovered a cure for AIDS and was contacting various international governments, the Vatican, the World Health Organization etc, demanding $1 million in return for the antidote. As a result of this obsessive mail campaign, he was sectioned.

Apparently, the police removed several dozen stacks of typewritten 'confidential reports' and a shedload of tape recordings from his flat - many of these were never retrieved. Due to the former Conservative Government's 'Care In the Community' policy, Nganga was 'let out' on day release one sunny Tuesday morning in 1994 and never came back - current whereabouts unknown.

'Beyond the Implode' was then used as a band name by a Mersey post-punk group for a couple of releases in 1979 and 1981. After lying dormant for a couple of decades, Jesus told me to steal and use the name in 2004, and the rest is mystery.