One is the loneliest number since you've gone away

August 12th 2007 5.55pm

Back in the dressing room Simon says to me, “the audience has all gone”
I said, “I know but there’s nothing we can do about it so we may as well just go and play our hearts out, after all that’s what we are here for”.
“Let’s go”, I add and we begin our short walk to face an empty hall.

The traditional opening number ‘Wake Up’ has been dropped on this occasion and we start with an elongated drum intro for The Mess. I walk up to the mike and introduce ourselves and we are off. The nerves, the anxiety are all gone. They don’t exist on the stage, they only exist in the anticipation of going on stage.

The number really rocks, it is great to play on a large stage with an excellent PA and we begin by just enjoying that sound and space. As we play the first number, faces begin appearing below us at the front of the stage and they are singing every word, it’s a little embarrassing as they are remembering them a little better than myself at this stage. The set is designed to have Mindless Violence start directly after the end of The Mess and that happens with great efficiency only allowing a couple of seconds of applause to elbow it’s way in before we are off again.

We are playing really well, I am delighted by the way I feel too, I have managed to get a little more sleep before this gig than I did last year and our appearance is a little earlier in the evening too so I am feeling none of the fatigue I was experiencing the last time I performed on this stage. As I introduced ‘Licensing Hours’ I could see that we had an audience stretching a few rows back and once the number had finished the applause was warm and full.

We then performed ‘No Respect’ for the first time at Blackpool and it was obvious that it had been anticipated last time and disappointed many by its absence. This time though its inclusion delighted the audience and the response was fantastic.
Now it was time to bring Colin Dredd on for his guest appearance. Whilst I introduce him and Don Adams is taking off his bass and handing it to him, I notice that our audience had grown considerably, we now have a more than respectable crowd in this huge Empress Ballroom and I am feeling soooo good.

As Colin readies himself I announce that this is our final gig and that it is only fitting to bring on the man that was part of the Neurotics for so long. The response was a great cry of anguish from the crowd, a huge “NOOOOOOOOO”. This was news they didn’t want to hear. This appearance in the Empress Ballroom at the Rebellion Festival 2007 was meant to be billed as our final gig but Darren the main organiser didn’t want us to split and hoped it would not be our last so he didn’t make a point of billing it as such. Because of this it came as a complete shock to our fans.
We do Blitzkreig Bop and Hypocrite with Colin, last year this point in the set felt like a dip, this time the news that this is goodbye helps to build the atmosphere and it now makes perfect sense.

After Hypocrite, Colin leaves to great applause and I look out at the size of our crowd and here they all are. We have been worried about the earlier billing we have been given and the effect of the smoking ban but apparently the attendance at the festival was 20% down on last year. The smoking ban had changed the behaviour of the audience with a mass exodus every time a band finishes. This results in the beginning of everyone’s set having decimated numbers but the fans come swarming in as soon as the nicotine intake has been satisfied.

Our audience numbers are now very satisfying indeed, sure, they are down on 2006 but then so is everyone’s on this Saturday. Ari Up and the Slits who come on after us have only half the audience they had last time. I feel good because last year it felt hat we had hijacked 999’s audience by default, this time we know they are all here because they want to be, because they are dying to see the Newtown Neurotics.

1963

After the police left having told my father that the boys stories had confirmed that it was I that set light to the lorry, I was given a withering dressing down that left me feeling wretched. I was told that the only thing that prevented me from going to prison was my age and that I had had a close call. The threat of going to gaol had been lifted but my gloom hadn’t.
I was confined to the house and when ever any of my friends called they were turned away with the news that I could not come out because I had been a bad boy. Billy and Graham did not call for me.
Any opportunity to revive my sins in conversation was taken up by my dad. For example, my mum would say, “Oh isn’t it a lovely day out” to which my Dad would say “yeah and if he’d hadn’t set light to a lorry he’d be out there with his friends at this moment.

I knew now that as the seconds ticked by I was getting closer to the whole thing blowing over but with every mention of that act of arson he reset the clock back to the beginning.
The atmosphere was so thick downstairs you could cut it with a wooden spoon. It was only punctuated by various sisters coming and going but not staying. No, escape was the main pre-occupation for the children of this house, to do anything but remain anywhere near arguing parents. This is a common pre-occupation of children in any household but with us there was a grim determination that set us aside from others.

I took myself up to the quiet of my room and gazed out of my window at the road that passed our house. We lived at the start of a terrace of ten houses. Our door number was number 1, I was impressed with that, there can’t be many people in this world that live in the very first house of an estate. We were elite, comprised of families that live at house number 1.
Because of that number I was convinced that our house was the very first one to be built in Harlow and at one time all roads led to our little abode. I cannot recall to this day ever visiting another house in Harlow that was numbered 1.
I’m not saying they don’t exist, I’m just saying that in the normal day to day of one’s life, you don’t often find yourself knocking on the door of Number 1, unless you were in the Drewett family or the police.

The most amazing reinforcement of the specialness of this number was the estate I was gazing at through my window on the other side of the road to us. Spinning Wheel Mead, didn’t have a number 1, the estate started at number 2, what’s the chances of that happening eh?
The word from the street was that in the scramble to build this pioneer town (yeah I know, Welwyn Garden City was the very first) Number 1 Spinning Wheel Mead was designated to be a pub and therefore needed a different set of blueprints for its construction. They built the estate and waited for further instructions for the public house. They never came, for what reason no-one ever found out. Instead the space was turned a square and a large peice of grass.

In my darkest days of low self esteem, I used to look at our door number and think to myself that it was an omen that one day I would be the best, I would be number 1. These days I think it was trying to tell me to look after number 1.

I don’t know, what’s in a number eh?

If I asked that same question to a mathematician, they would say a whole universe can lie in a number, I’m sure they are right, but I don’t really want to know.

The universe I know is as much as I can handle.