Tuesday 25 September 2012

Troy Tate

Last week my band went out for a drink with the new drummer. He asked us how come we know, and play with, somebody that used to be a famous professional guitarist.

We explained how one Friday night the boy singer, his wife, and another friend of mine visited my girlfriend and me for a curry. That my girlfriend was a primary school teacher, and how she told us a story about her day. She told us that the guy who came in occasionally to teach the children Spanish and guitar brought his daughter to school that day, and how the daughter had told one of the teachers a secret. The secret was that her dad used to be famous, he'd been on Top of the Pops, and had played to millions of people. In the 80's he'd been in a band called "The Teardrop Explodes" and his surname was Tate. We explained how the singer and my friend worked at the same call centre, how close it was to the primary school, and that they remembered one of the employees who was about the right age, sex and had the right surname to have been this star in the 80s. How my friend knew the rotas and rang the call centre and asked for the duty manager (who that night was a pre-operative transsexual). How he told the duty manager to go to xxxxxxx Tate's desk and ask him "Did you used to play guitar in The Teardrop Explodes?". How he then said down the phone "It doesn't matter if it doesn't make sense, just go and ask him." and how my friend eventually told us that he was at his desk, sheepishly nodding his head.

Our new drummer said that he didn't know which was the least likely bit of the whole ludicrous story, that this old rock star works in a call centre, that the duty manager was a tranny, that they all work at the same place, that the old rock star had said yes, or that Richard had a girlfriend.

Richard "Story within a Story" B

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