Island Hideaway - Chapter 6 Eddie

"This is crap," were the first words Eddie ever said to me. This was our second day at University, at the Clyne welcome disco (Clyne was our halls of residence).​​

​​He meant the music, but also the scene, eager first years thrusting everywhere, and also Clyne itself, a mock Tudor castle carelessly converted into student accommodation, with stuck educational views and methods, gowns to be warn to dinner, before which grace would be said in Latin, just in case god turned out to be Roman after all. But mostly he meant the DJ, for it wasn't the individual songs he detested, though he did of course detest them, it was the mix, the failure to follow a consistent tempo, theme, beat, no bigger picture, no plan, just record slapped on after record, no thought-through segues, no unmentioned puns like Shakatak followed by the Jaws theme.​​

​​Bitter? I said, offering him a drink. His glass was three-quarters empty (Eddie was never a glass one-quarter-full man).​​

​​"Always bitter," he said, again a multi-faceted answer. Beer was all he drank, his mood was mostly a mix of sarcastic, despairing with the world or just plain angry with it, and his words had bite, one snarling sentence after another.​​

​​We stood at the back of the disco and didn't bother putting the world to rights, we just laid out its wrongs in precious detail. "Nobody can fucking DJ," he complained. "It's like the art of catching woolly mammoths, it's been lost to mankind. I've not seen anyone catch a woolly mammoth or DJ properly in my lifetime." ​​

​​"John Peel?" I suggested.​​

​​"True," Eddie said. "He can DJ. He's just crap at playing records."​​

​​This was also true. Right Tune wrong speed was the John Peel cliché, he'd play 45s at 33, 33s at 45, spend 5 minutes reading out a tour schedule that had finished the previous month, play B-sides instead of A sides, but boy could the man DJ.​​

​​Eddie studied Politics and History. I was Politics and Philosophy. We worked out which lectures we both took and from that day forth did them together, never taking the opportunity of a note-taking friend to bunk off, for politics was our comedy, we would spend hours imitating the lecturers, deconstructing their argument, mocking their tone, their catchphrases (fascism is like jelly was Richard Taylor's) and if they didn't have catchphrases we'd invent them. Mr Boyce, who taught Ireland, morphed into 70s unfunny comedian Jimmy Cricket in our retelling. ​​

​​It was through Eddie that I got involved with the student radio station in the first place. ​I used to go to the station when hewas doing a show and help out.  Occasionally he'd let me suggest records. Because there was no way to phone into the studio, I would play the role of Joe public, entering the competitions he ran to win some of the freebies sent in by obscure indie bands. I still have my Dr Phibes and The House of Wax Equations T Shirt. ​​

 ​"You should do a show, Terrence," he said to me. ​​

​​"You really think so?" I said.​​

​​"Yes," he said. "It will anoy the fuck out of everyone."​​