Please note the items you are about to read consist largely of scurrilous gossip, vicious back-stabbing and idle speculation. As Jon Stewart might say, its stories are not fact checked. Its informants are not journalists. And its opinions are not fully thought through.
THE GONADS! CHARLTON! SOUTH LONDON! STREET ROCK N ROLL! COCKNEY CULTURE! COCKNEY ROCK! OI-TONE! SKA! BEER! CURRY! WORKERS’ RIGHTS! FLAG-GIRLS! ENGLAND! OI OI OI! THIS IS WHO WE ARE!
Sept 30. You won’t want to miss this – Jeff Turner does his one-man Q&A thing at the Triangle café in Deptford (not Greenwich!) on Saturday 15th October. You will want to miss this – Fat Col croons the songs of Matt Monro at New Eltham social club chucking out time every Saturday. All together: “Born free, till somebody shopped me…”
The Gonads officially support the erection of a Roy Hudd statue. A bronze sculpture of great man, who died two years ago aged 83, will be installed on a bench outside of the Theatre Royal, Bury St Edmunds, the spiritual home of his one-man show. Band spokesman Effete El tells the blog, “Roy Hudd was a huge fan of Max Miller and variety comedy, he had a soft spot for Infected and Badly Done too. We would like to organise a ‘Pathetique jamboree’ to raise funds for his large erection next year, so perhaps Max Splodge and Monkish would like to join us.” Sotto voce, El adds “The only concern is Roy’s lifelong support of Crystal Pal-arse. But on the plus side at least he never flaunted a Gillingham scarf in public…”
Fact: It was Roy Hudd who dubbed Gal “the Max Miller of Fleet Street” – the finest accolade a Gonad could wish for.
Sept 29. Gig noos: Ed Banger & the Nosebleeds headline the Hope & Anchor tomorrow night, the extraordinary JoJo & the Teeth top the bill at Dublin Castle on 7th October.
We get a call from “the new face of street-poetry” Hudson Reuters who treats us to this ditty: “Some girls are all right in a bath marbled white, doused in perfume that’s exotic. But the queen of my soul stands up in a bowl and does what she can with carbolic!” Positively Gonadian! Although the carbolic does give your age away, mate.
A tearful Fat Col today pleaded with Wattsie to accept the American Gonads offer to join them permanently in Shitsville, Connecticut. We say ‘pleaded with’, he actually used a megaphone on the street outside of her bijou dungeon of pain, in clear breach of his restraining order – as the cops who led him away in handcuffs reminded him. “Every sultry inch of her is evil,” he hollered repeatedly, until a man in a white coat administered a soothing injection.
Sept 28. Gal is promising “big policy decisions and a surprise twist” to emerge from this week’s Gonads Curry Night, thought to be the band’s last official Ruby this side of December. We wait with baited wossname…
Sept 27. US Gonads drummer Rodger “Trotsky” Shosa has praised our version of Joe Hill, saying “That’s a great cover! Obviously, not done as well as the American line-up would do it, but I understand those guys are trying their best.” Rodger also condemned Lord Waistrel’s defence of Meloni and pledged the American Gonads’ “full support” for Wattsie Watts. He even offered to swap Wattsie for Tippy Jay the Tripod so she could join the US band permanently. Rumours that chief negotiator Fat Col replied, “Throw in Suzi Moon and it’s a deal,” cannot be confirmed or denied.
Unseen this week: physical copies of Revolution Now, Terence Hayes, PM, and Steve Whale who is believed to be out of the country on official Prankster business…
Sept 26. Reminder: you’ve got until Friday 30th to snap up early bird tickets for next year’s Rebellion Festival, which will take place on Thursday 3rd – Sunday 6th August 2023. Already confirmed are: The Only Ones, The Dickies, Bad Manners, HR (Bad Brains), D.R.I, Rubella Ballet, Blue Carpet Band, Donkey Dom and Foreign Legion.
A motion condemning Gal for disloyalty will be put to the vote later this week. Wattsie, who is spitting blood, told the blog, “How can he review the Buzzcocks album in the Daily Mirror and not ours? It’s a disgrace.” Agreed.
Random noos: NOFX will release a new album called Double Album on 2nd December… early bird tickets for Blackpool’s two-day Punx Picnic next June are available until 1st November; confirmed bands include the Test Tube Babies, Menace and Knock Off… the Pocket Gods are releasing one copy of their new album, on vinyl, with a price tag of £1million; the platter will go on sale at Empire Records, St Albans, on Monday 3rd October. The band state: “We've been protesting the rubbish royalty rates from Spotify and co since 2015 with a series of albums of just 30 second songs (they pay out a crap royalty after 30 secs) but we’ve now decided to do something positive so with the £1 million we are starting our own ethical streaming service where we pledge to pay both artists and songwriters at least 1p per stream (which is 50 times Spotify’s rate!) It’s our DIY punk ethos that has made us officially the most prolific band of the digital age.”
Early warning: Fat Col planning to set up his Woolwich market stall again in November. His many exclusive items are thought to include an “authentic” Bayeux City Rollers Tapestry which experts believe is “unlikely” to have been made in the 11th century England.
Lord Waistrel has come under heavy fire for his support for Italy’s Giorgia Meloni. Militant Wattsie Watts, currently at the Labour conference in Liverpool, called on his Lordship to apologise or resign as Gonads manager. But the feudal reactionary hit back informing the Daily Telegraph by pigeon post that “fun-loving Giorgia is not far-Right at all”. Waistrel, who has been busy shorting sterling, describes the new Italian PM as “relatively moderate” and “pleasantly Conservative if a bit wet” adding something unnecessary about melons. Scrotum, Waistrel’s wrinkled retainer, told this blog, “Ms Watts his hentitled to ’er views but she should remember ’is nibs hain’t the Gonads manager, but their owner. So in the words of the Bard, button it for once, trappy.”
Sept 25. A youngish woman who none of us know, honest, has emailed us volunteering to be our “Gunk girl” – a reference to the revolting lyrics of Dogging In Dartford. The impish 30-something brunette attached a picture of her face splattered with what we can only hope is copious amounts of Mayonnaise. In her left hand she is a holding what appears to be the top of a large uncooked pink sausage. A furious Wattsie ordered us to delete the email and block her on social media, which of course we did, but not before Fat Col had set off to the wilds of Dartford Heath to “recruit her as our next flag girl”. He’s calling it Operation Pollock – in honour of Jackson Pollock, geddit? The splatter painter… Cultured, see. He’s still an oaf though. (PS Good work, son).
Sept 24. Random noos: part-time Gonads vocalist Carrie Griffiths to release her debut solo EP next year… Suzi Moon’s new full-length album Dumb & In Luv is out now, insert your own “full-length” gag here… in a surprise twist, the Red Hot Chili Peppers’ new song Eddie is not, as widely supposed, a tribute to the late Glaswegian-born comedy legend Eddie Large, but rather the equally great guitar hero Eddie Van Halen… and an indignant Chelsea Dom last night completely denied “absurd” rumours that the PM has been replaced by an android; he also denied reports that the senior prankster’s long-awaited solo EP will be called Rust In Peace, Byte The Bullet or Bionic For The Troops.
Sept 23. Proper news – our next fully public gig will be in Southend-on-Sea on Saturday 21st January, at The Venue at The Cricketers in Westcliffe. Watch the news page for a ticket link.
In grimmer noos, fears grow for the health and safety of Terence Hayes, PM. Insiders report that the great man has vanished off the radar “like a UFO accelerating to warp speed”. El Tel was not present at last weekend’s moving Jolly Pranksters memorial event nor is he responding to emails, texts or phone calls. The mundane conclusion is that he has had a medical relapse, but dark theories continue to circulate and titillate the gullible. Wattsie Watts reports that a number of online sites catering for the conspiracy-minded believe that the PM was either abducted or passed away several years ago, and has been replaced (by either aliens or Grand Rank Pranksters) with a fully functioning robot, or Tel-bot, “so that his calming presence would continue to be felt amongst his followers and stop them asking awkward questions”. Fiendish!
Wattsie, who recently attained the dual rank of a fully-qualified nurse and senior robotics professor in black-rimmed spectacles, a tight white lab coat and 50denier black lace stockings carrying a clipboard (for a forthcoming song with a title we’re afraid to mention), goes on with impressive authority, “There have been clear signs that the robot stopped functioning efficiently some time ago. Look at its problems with hip and knee joints – it could be the effects of old age or it could be the result of a series of mechanical malfunctions. People also noticed how often its speech goes into a strange, repetitive woss-name mode. That’s not normal. Something sinister is happening here. PS. Free Alex Belfield!” Blimey. Loyal blog-readers as well as all practising Pranksters are urged to be on the lookout for the real PM, or his android double, with immediate effect. To order brethren! Stand by the PM! GSTK!
Above are the last known pictures of El Tel.
Sept 18. Here are some moving shots of Friday’s night’s show, and here’s a review of the event from the Arts and Culture section of the Irish Times:
If time is a river and life the bridge that goes over it, then the Gonads were the temporal tidal wave that crashed over Deptford Creek and washed happy punters away in wave after wave of laughter on Friday evening, writes Stuart Bannister. The unorthodox band, led by the bearded contrarian “Gal Gonad”, hit the Triangle café with drinking song after drinking song – all based on “true stories”, he assured us, although they all seem to feature the sort of characters and situations that one would normally find only in an inner city psychiatrist’s case-book or a television soap opera.
“Gal” is backed by delightful co-vocalist Ms Wattsie, with her sweet soprano stylings, bewitching laugh and the kind of dark blue eyes that stare directly into a man’s soul with neither artifice nor evasion. Guitarist Philip “Pip” McDermott was the smooth glue in the somewhat chaotic set, holding things together while “Gal” changed the running order on a whim and indulged between songs in a bawdy barrage of non-sequiturs, puns, paradoxes, confessions and bad-taste jokes. Quoting Shakespeare, he refused to apologise for old lyrics or tone down his attacks on “round-dodgers”, who he publicly named, and those he identified as “pretentious posers”. However, it fell to the drummer, Paul “SkaNad” Mummery to perform the evening’s most serious song, a punked-up version of the US trade union folk song Joe Hill.
Bass duties were handled by the youthful James “Bluebottle” Cruttwell who seem distracted by both his aluminum shoes and his young paramour’s prodigious intake of two-for-one Happy Hour cocktails. The classy Ms Wattsie came into her own on the almost Beatleseque pop romp, Infected, sparkling with deadpan comic timing, thespian disdain and unnecessary bad language.
The “Nads” were joined for their finale by lithesome late-comer Carrie Griffiths, formerly of Ska band Buster Shuffle, who gleefully sang along on the “very true story” of how “Gal” lost his love to an elderly gentleman called Charles Harper and his disreputable band of over-sexed brigands. This was a rare acoustic set for the band, who originated in nearby Charlton, and although well-received, it felt completely different from their far-harder new album playback which preceded it. The merry throng of Gonads fans, including Ferrier Frank, Charlie Bugle – a croaking Cockney – and south London RMT militant Christine, reveled in old favourites such as The Drinking Song, Getting P***ed and Grant Mitchell with its introductory misdirection.
The only hints of unpleasantness involved a heated debate about whether the Triangle is in Greenwich or Deptford (Deptford – Ed), and during the Q&A session when a gentleman known as “Sidcup” Micky Billings asked Ms Wattsie why she refuses to marry someone known as “Fat Col” – apparently her obese, dimwitted stalker. If looks could kill Mr Billings would be on life support. It was the only time the good humour of the evening came close to evaporating. Mercifully the band’s former bass player Gentleman John Woodward broke the tension and restored order by asking about the availability of the album, which, in a clear example of Teutonic efficiency, is still sitting on pallets in a Bavarian warehouse a week after the record label’s release date. Afterwards, the band’s Amazonian manager, Miss Management, told a press conference set up by the Kick Down The Doors PR agency that more acoustic gigs were a possibility and might involve a brass section led by Gonads fan Florence “Flo” Kettle and classically-trained fiddle-player Emma Guepe. I for one would very much enjoy that and so, I suspect, would this appreciative audience.
Sept 17. A terrific gig in Deptford last night. We did an eleven-song acoustic set: Yeti, The Drinking Song, Buy Me A Drink You Bastards, Grant Mitchell, Joe Hill, Alconaut, Beer Can Boogie, Getting Pissed, Infected, I Lost My Love To A UK Sub and Oi Mate. Carrie Griffiths joined us on stage and the Q&A session was marred only by Fat Col's pal Micky Billings asking Wattsie why she won't marry him... Thanks to those who came, and cheers to all those who wanted to get there but couldn't face the uncertainty of the trains in these historic times. Pictures to follow!
Sept 16. Tonight’s the night! It’s our big album launch event in Deptford fun city this evening. There will be a full album playback at 7pm, then an acoustic set at 8pm, followed by a band Q&A. It’s at the Triangle Café & Bar, in Harmony Place, SE8 3FE. Doors: 6.30pm.
STOP PRESS. Gonads security techs have detected a shocking attempt to hack tonight’s event. Cyber warriors infiltrated our software and left a number of disturbing questions for the Q&A linked to false names and fake email accounts. These included, for Paul: You have put on three stone since joining the Gonads – ever thought of sitting out the Paulaner and pilau every now and again, tubs? And for James: Do you realise how many Gonads fans would love to poke that poxy Gills scarf up right your aris and then set fire to it? But we’re afraid the worst is reserved for Gal who gets: You used to mean something, look at you now, popping up on shit TV shows nobody watches, writing columns nobody reads, and fucking about in Deptford while your friends are off playing stadiums around the world – how can you live with yourself, you fucking failure? Go on, fuck off to Portugal and don’t come back. Ouch.
The crude and distressing, if sometimes close to home, questions were spotted at 7am this morning and are believed to be the work of the mysterious Essex-based non-binary mischief-maker, The Bitch. Band spokesman Effete El told the blog “We take cyber security very seriously and all of the fake questions have been binned”. But, he adds, “In the event nobody turns up tonight we’ll undelete them and ask ’em anyway.”
Prankster alert: the emergency weekender, codename Tudor, will take place at that Whitehall place from 6pm sharp tonight. To order brethren.
Sept 13. Although this blog remains closed, we are popping back to remind you that our album launch is this Friday, the 16th September in Deptford, southeast London, and will consist of: 7pm. Full album playback. 8pm. Acoustic set. 8.45pm. Full band Q&A. Venue: Triangle Café & Bar, 13 Harmony Place, Deptford London SE8 3FE. Doors: 6.30pm. Security: Tony “Two Fucks” Tagliarini. Admission is free, but anyone not donating a crisp Jack’s Alive (£5 – Ed) to Bexley Deaf Centre can expect to be named and shamed.
STOP PRESS. Fat Col has been apprehended! Tony “Two Fucks” Tagliarini tracked him down to the home of the Nosher in the roughest part of Eltham on Friday night. It seems she had “liberated” him with the help of her strongman side-kick, Big Jel the Gimp. The Nosher told Tagliarini that she had to do it because “I knew Col’s poor heart was breaking, cruelly locked up behind a partition in Wattsie Watts’s maison de larmes”. In a shock development, Tagliarini then beat the news out of them that the Nosher has been coaching Col for an appearance on the crap ITV2 dating show Secret Crush where, and we quote, “brave singletons reach out to people they hold a candle for”. Although in Col’s case the crush is hardly secret, is it? He never shuts up about it. We’re told he has perfected his own poem to woo his longsuffering intended (W. Watts, Ms.) with, along the lines of “My name’s Fat Col, and here’s my tale, eating’s my game – I’m a hungry male, when I fell in the Thames I swallowed a whale, I ate Toby and his carvery an’ I went to jail, the only thing that I will not eat is kale, c’mon girl I’ll ‘clean your plate’ without fail, stopping and starting like British Rail, and after all that, we’ll have a rock solid nail…’ The romantic fool. Let’s hope she forgets to guarantee his bail. But is there really a chance that some dirty doggerel in the presence of a TV crew could persuade you-know-who to make Col’s rather sordid dreams come true? Firstly, we very much doubt it and secondly, in the wise words of Mr. Tagliarini, we really could not give two fucks.
STOP PRESS #2. TV personality Lizzie Cundy tells us she “feels like a new woman” after having a vagina-tightening procedure last month; experts say the operation was a tremendous success but sadly Lee Wilson is still London’s tightest cunt.
While we’re here: Sparrer’s weekend 50th anniversary gigs were the absolute dog’s bollocks… frequent flyer Lord Waistrel now giving his address as “the Virgin Clubhouse, upper class wing, Heathrow Terminal 3”… the Members assemble for a special Nicky Tesco remembrance show on Saturday at the 100 Club… The Rawhides have done nothing and have no plans other than to keep talking about doing things and then not doing them…
Sept 9. Lord Waistrel has closed this blog for a period of national mourning, but he has allowed us to say that our album REVOLUTION NOW! The Unstoppable Farce! is released as a download today and available from Apple Music : iTunes : Spotify : Amazon : Deezer : 7digital.
Don’t forget our album launch is a week today in Deptford, with full play-back, acoustic set and Q&A session. The track list is RAGMAN’S TRUMPET, TDA, HOPPERS’ HUT, FEDERALES, SCREAM MY NAME, TEETH AHT, PROMISED LAND, PENTONVILLE, JOE HILL, REVOLUTION NOW? The CDs, when they arrive, will come with three top quality bonus tracks: TOO OLD TO RIOT, THREE CHORDS & THE TRUTH and GLAD TO BE ALIVE. As you might guess from the titles, the theme of the album comes into its own in the second half – which celebrates working class power and resistance while questioning today’s cancel culture.
Sept 8. Important Ministry of Delusion update. The M.O.D. has decreed that 2025 will be the final year that the Gonads perform traditional live shows in the UK. Said a spokesman: “The Gonads will continue to exist, however the band will operate only within the dimensions of NFT art and science fiction. Actual gigs will thenceforth be superseded by NFT videos, limited cinematic releases, situation comedy, performance art, neo-surrealism and computer animation.” Blimey. The Ministry has also commissioned a team of scientists, led by Oi – The Boffin, to “prove beyond question” that the light-fingered LA-based band The Monkees used a time machine to nip into the future and shamelessly half-inch the tune of SE7 Dole Day. Quite right too, the thieving mop-haired bastards.
Sept 7. An important twist in the Fat Col mystery. DI Ashley Blake last night announced “I am convinced that Colin Gannon staged his own disappearing stunt”. (We pause here, gentle reader, for you to clutch your pearls and gasp.) Blake added, “However, forensics suggest that Mr Gannon was aided and abetted by someone close to him – so we can rule out Wattsie Watts as a suspect.” While the filth dither, Waistrel’s private investigator, Tony “Two fucks” Tagliarini told this blog that he is “hot on the trail of the perps” and expects to bring them in “by the weekend”. Alive or dead, we asked jokingly. “I don’t give two fucks,” he snapped. The clue, we suppose, is in the name…
Sept 6. Updates alert! Update #1: Gal’s Big 69 plan – to release 69 new songs in the year commencing 13th May 2024, as part of his 69th birthday celebrations, were approved last night by a Gonads quorum. Effectively this means we will release our new live album next year and delay the next studio album until May 2024, releasing further albums at quarterly junctions with a 69-track box-set collection to round them all off. Even Lord Waistrel has approved the scheme “as long as it costs no more to record than a single album would”, but we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it. Update #2: Southern Ireland Gonads shows “likely” for next Spring… Update #3: Waistrel has flown over his New York associate Tony “Two Fucks” Tagliarini to “urgently trace our dear friend Fat Col”.
Sept 5. Here are some pretty pictures from beautiful downtown Erith yesterday. We’re rehearsing hard for our INTIMATE GONADS album launch event in Deptford on Friday week (16th) which will feature: a full playback of our new album Revolution Now! (released this Friday by Diana of Randale Records), an acoustic set consisting of at least ten numbers – six of them NOT from our current live set, and a full-band Q&A. Vive Le Rock are already calling it the event of the year! Probably. Venue: Triangle Cafe & Bar, Harmony Place, nr Deptford Creek. Doors 6.30pm. Playback 7pm. Acoustic set 8pm. Q&As: 8.45pm Admission is free, but only a round-dodging tightwad of the worst order would object to handing over a modest £5 donation for our local charity Bexley Deaf Centre.
All went well yesterday until the very end when Wattsie was detained by the Old Bill and then questioned at length about Fat Col’s unexplained disappearance. Foul play is suspected, along, in Col’s case, with fouled underpants. For foreplay see the Nosher.
We’re sad to hear that our old pal, the great Phil Mogg of UFO, suffered a heart attack last week. Moggy is now out of hospital but all UFO dates have been postponed until he gets the all-clear from the quacks. Luckily Phil keeps pretty fit, although not as fit as Emma Mogg (Cut! – Ed). Get well soon mate. More details at ufo-music.info.
FACT: UFO’s Strangers In The Night remains one of the all-time great rock live albums, up there with The Who’s Live At Leeds, Frampton Comes Alive and Lizzy’s Live & Dangerous.
Sept 4. This month’s quickfire edition of Ask Gal Anything starts with a surreal feel. Don “Compo” Compton asks, who would win a fight between a baboon and a badger? Gal: A badger every time.
Q. You are renowned for your true stories, but which Gonads lyric is the furthest from the truth? – asks a more serious Debbie Miller. Gal: Without doubt it’s Surfing Rebel Psycho Punks, with the line “when we get our woodies out, we’re always hanging ten”. Q. What songs will you be playing in the acoustic set on 16th September – Johnny Lawrence. Gal: I don’t want to give that away but we will be playing ten or eleven songs and more than half of them aren’t in the current live set. Keep the questions coming.
Wattsie is convinced that Fat Col was “taken by aliens” but Plumstead plod are treating his disappearance as “suspicious”. DI Ashley Blake stopped dancing the macarena long enough to tell the South London Press: “Mr Gannon has not been home since his disappearance and we have received an anonymous tip-off claiming that he has been kidnapped. One of Ms Watts’s neighbours reports seeing a “shady-looking” man and a woman ‘casing the joint’ in the early hours of the morning shortly before Mr Gannon is believed to have been removed from his bed. This is an active police investigation.” Blimey.
Sept 3. A new shock for Wattsie. She tells us she woke up this morning to find that Fat Col had vanished from her house. Shaken she tells us, “I went into his padded cell, wearing a hazmat suit, of course, but he wasn’t there. The window was open but he had gone. There was no note, no explanation and no sign of the crane that must have been used to hoist him out of there. It’s very odd.”
Sept 2. It’s one week until Cock Sparrer play their 50th anniversary gig at the Roundhouse, and just two weeks until our album launch! An exciting month. Watch the blog for more details…
Random noos: NOFX to “end next year”, says Fat Mike… and the unseen Motorhead trailer for Iron Fist is now playing on YouTube complete with dead knights and comely wenches…
More bad news for Wattsie. Martin Sporrell’s estimate for her “house divided” woodwork comes in at over a grand, and that’s without the turnstiles. Looks like our next gig after Deptford will be a fundraiser…
Sept 1. Bad news for Wattsie. Martin Sporrell (aggressive gooner) moved Fat Col into her bijou apartment yesterday and last night she walked in on him to find him shirtless. “He’s got a belly like a dropped lasagne…and not a normal lasagne either, more catering tray size,” she tells us, obviously in a state of shock. “Worse than that, his farts stink like a zookeeper’s boots.” We understand that she has decided to have a series of wooden partitions built to divide her home completely into two so they have no unannounced contact – just like Steptoe & Son did in the classic 1972 episode, Divided We Stand. The telly would be on her side of the living room wall, of course, with a coin-operated turnstile in the hall outside Col’s bedroom to discourage movement, and another one just inside the front door as a precaution “to keep Lee Wilson out”.
