Free Dancing in the Darkness by Frankie Poullain Page A

sisters is the holy grail –holier than mousetrap cheese in a Tom and Jerry cartoon. And let’s face it, if you look like me – a bulldog licking piss off a nettle to wash down the wasp he’s been chewing on – the only way it’s going to happen is if you’re in a band.
    The two opportunities I had of partaking in said holy grail were a bit like cricket’s legendary contest The Ashes: the participants were English and Australian, no one really knew what was going on and it was boring. That should really mean no one else is interested. To anyone who still is, however, my message can be summed up as follows: it’s all forced fun at the end of the day.

    Forced fun might as well be called forced labour. It’s hard work and there’s usually no pay-off. Any situation like a festival or a circus where you’re expected to have fun is an organised fun situation. The idea is that you will have fun – a Valentine’s dinner where you’re expected to be seduced or told you’re beautiful, that that was the best night ever and so on. And ditto festivals such as Glastonbury: it’s not just the hippy stuff, it’s being expected to have a good time that gets my goat. File dancing at a disco in the same category, along with all those other situations where you have to have fun. They all seem to short-circuit the spontaneity – and what makes people truly happy is spontaneity.
    Maybe it’s something to do with thinking too much. Or just being plain hare-brained. I mean, people who think they’re clever don’t dance, do they? When was the last time anyone saw Stephen Hawking in a disco?
    As crazy as it sounds, threesomes fell into that category for me, because I was a ‘rock star’ and they were part of the pre-prepared package. And that’s why, when I finally found myself in the heavy-metal holy land of a threesome with sisters (at a palatial hotel suite in Melbourne in February 2004and in the Camden Holiday Inn six months later), I behaved like I was at my granny’s, preparing tea, coffee and biscuits for the girls while they got it on. My grandma would have been so proud of me; it was the politest I’ve been in my life. Of course, there’s always the suspicion that they may not have been sisters at all…

How To Teach Someone a Lesson You’ll Never Forget
    C ontrary to expectations, we didn’t crack the German market. They took their rock seriously and we didn’t. It was simple enough to understand, but record companies rarely trade in such homespun truisms. So we kept plugging away, visiting Germany on a regular basis in the forlorn hope that British cock rock could dent the Teutonic consciousness.
    Our record company, Atlantic, wouldn’t even let us celebrate the biggest night of our lives, booking a late-night private jet after our victorious 2004 Brits appearance so we could appear on a German talk show the following day. The press made a big deal about us ducking out of all the parties after the event and going home early, which was embarrassing enough in itself, but what was worse was not being able to savour what should have, on paper, been ‘the greatest night of our lives’. The purpose of this explanation isn’t to vent bitterness, however, but rather an attempt to excuse what followed.

    After our appearance on Germany’s most popular chat show the very next day, we checked into our hotel in Düsseldorf. We signed in, as usual, with our aliases – Justin as ‘Fray Bentos’, Dan as ‘Bernard Matthews’, Ed as ‘Roger Daily’ and (after a brief ill-judged flirtation with ‘Pierre De Fille’) myself as ‘Scot Free’ – nothing to do with Scottish nationalism, but instead inspired by a knack of avoiding mini-bar charges.
    Band, crew and hangers-on assembled in the bar for drinks. The German football squad, then managed by Rudi Völler, also happened to be guests and were having a team meeting in the next room. One by one, we