Thank you, Harvey G. & update

Once upon a time, a young lady married an absolute nutcase. Yep. You got it in one. I hear you laughing - “Takes one to know one.” Well I can't argue with that.


This nutcase was always dead keen to make a buck or two, above and beyond the nine till five. 
So, mid 1970s at the weekends, he would go out flyposting to promote various gigs for the Manchester music business. Good money, strictly cash. Our kitchen was usually shared with rolls and rolls of posters for this and that, and buckets ready for the paste, and brushes and what all. 


He was even known to do a bit of humping, if you'll pardon my language - the muscle required to shift the amps and equipment around. One Saturday morning at 7 o’clock somebody phoned him insisting he find half a ton of dry ice by that evening. Wtf ? Where the hell do you get dry ice from? And on a weekend? The original lot had come by an accident and vanished into thin air (sorry).

 
Apart from dodging the authorities, carrying a bucket and a roll of posters, and possibly a ladder, and having a lookout on each corner, there was much more fun to be had. This entailed defacing the posters put up by the opposition. Gig wars ? Definitely. Not between the bands or the venues – more a case of the promoters making sure every corner of the city was suitably informed, and the other lot’s gigs were second choice on the night. I think Harvey Goldsmith was regarded with respect, a bit like a local Godfather. He did live in the southern satellite of nearest Cheshire at the time, I believe. (I know, this is namedropping, but without him this particular story might not exist.) If he turned up at a gig in person (rare) we all got very excited. Would he put his influential muscle behind the band ?


I will not say he had a hand in all this cloak and dagger stuff but somebody, who considered himself a bit of an entrepreneur on Harvey G's behalf shall we say, made sure those posters went up. And if I've got things slightly wrong in the detail of the gig wars, well it was so long ago.........  but the bare bones of this are the gospel truth. I'm just trying not to libel or offend anybody. Especially not HG. He's probably got more lawyers than the Queen and doesn't deserve any offence from me.


Defacing tactics were nothing crude, such as ripping them down. Somebody gave the nutcase and all the other flyposters on the team a roll of self–adhesive stickers to put one each on the rivals' faces. Just to make them look a teeny bit foolish.


And it spiralled. They were just too good not to spread around a bit. Proper adverts got the makeover. The more serious and conservative, all the more inviting.  There were orders for reprints of the stickers, and some nice big ones for the full size billboards. Since the flyposters were required to run down to the Midlands or wherever now and then, you could rightly say it all went viral. Everybody wanted a sticker roll.


As I remember it, the word on the street got round to Lenny Henry. Now I’ve hit Wikipedia and Google, but there’s no mention I can see of the first sequence of events.  Maybe I haven't looked hard enough. You’ll have to trust me on this one. And in Manchester our legend is that Lenny Henry put the original Big Idea together.  If anybody knows him or wants to check this out and correct me, be my guest.


And because I am a bit of a hoarder, and suddenly develop a full appreciation of historical value when required to defend my hoarding,


 

I give you (drum roll please)

The original, First Edition, circa 1975–6,

doodled upon and stuck to the front of a battered file binder  –

So here's to Harvey G., just in case he invented the thing, and Lenny Henry, for carrying it through, and Richard Curtis et al.

Wonder if I could auction it off for Red Nose Day?

UPDATE ~

Have now answered own question since this post unfortunately went out as scheduled in the middle of the night straight after a terrible earthquake and tsunami.  It feels as though you can never give enough, so this would actually be a great day to win the lottery to send loads of money to Japan.