Maynard - a money saving solution

Magic "our Maurice"!!

No, Tarrant was never in the Bonzos, Stevie. The man playing the recorder on TOTP was the inimitable Vivian Stanshall – inventor of the surreal but hilarious Sir Henry at Rawlinson End and the man who announced each of the instruments on Mike Oldfield's Tubular Bells.

He's the singer on this one…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aD9Lfyg2l6E

I had a drink with that Neil Innes once…

A comprehensive answer FF, there goes that misunderstanding of the last 25 years!!

It's an odd boy who doesn't like sport!

Tell me if you can fatfox, would it have been Vivian playing the hosepipe, while swinging it round overhead, when the Bonzos appeared at the Palais all those years ago?

Almost certainly, Robster. He was probably not the only Bonzo who *could* play the hosepipe, but I think he was the only one who habitually *did*. Here's Neil Innes talking about recording Urban Spaceman (produced by Paul McCartney under a pseudonym):

"But after about eight-and-a-half hours, we finally got the recording done. And Paul was magic. He double-tracked the drums. He played ukulele on it. And really got a really, really good feel. I think at the end, Viv Stanshall said, ‘I want to record my hose pipe.’ He had a glass hose pipe with a trumpet mouthpiece and a plastic funnel stuck in the other end. And he whirled it about his head. And the engineer said, ‘You can’t record that thing.’ Paul said, ‘Yes, you can. Just put a microphone in each corner.’ So that took another 20 minutes."

I loved the Bonzos from the late afternoon kids' TV programme Do Not Adjust Your Set, where they were the house band (the acting talent on the show was Eric Idle, Terry Jones, Michael Palin, David Jason and Denise Coffey).

There was a guy with a little record stall in the market who had a box of ex-jukebox singles at anything from one-and-a-tanner to half-a-crown (new singles were a whopping 6/8d), and after saving some of my pocket money for many weeks, I went there to buy my first record, but found I could afford two. So as well as Urban Spaceman/Canyons Of Your Mind I delightedly went home with Pink Floyd's See Emily Play/The Scarecrow (these were considered very 'progressive' selections for an 11-year-old). I still have them both.

We must be of the same era fatfox. I remember singles at 6s 8d, but I was at Gateway boys at the time, and I was definitely in my teens when See Emily Play and Arnold Lane were cutting edge. That was very progressive for an 11 year old though.

Ah, well it's all about proportions/ratios, isn't it. A few years difference between us now seems nothing – so yes, we are much of an era – but a few years in 1968 was a lot, because it was an appreciable percentage of our lives. You would have regarded yourself as much older than me back then.

I was born in 57 and started at City Boys in 68, with odd musical tastes for an 11-year-old. And buying a second-hand Piper at the Gates of Dawn just after I turned 12 definitely marked me out as a bit weird. Mind you, I find that Interstellar Overdrive still baffles most people today. Early Floyd was very 'out there'.

Funnily enough, I briefly met an exact contemporary last week – the first I've seen in years. It was Alastair Campbell, who is so well known as a Burnley supporter that it doesn't often cross people's minds that he went to school in Leicester.

It turns out that I am actually seven years older than you fatfox, so that would have been a huge gap at the time. I remember some of the Gateway pupils engaging in bouts of fisticuffs with City Boys pupils at lunchtimes, but that was swiftly stamped out.

A mate of mine got me into Pink Floyd, and also Joni Mitchell and Neil Young. I drew the line at Frank Zappa though. Like you I still play my vinyl stuff today.

Didn't know about Alistair Cambell. I shall now google him.

What's google?