Buddy

He could tie a knot in a cherry stalk with his tongue.

He could open beer bottles with his eye socket.

He looked great in cowboy boots when he was twenty five. (Just ask Maria McKee).

He almost managed to buy a pink Cadillac in New Orleans when we were all on acid.

He wrote ‘EAT ME’ in large block capitals on my forehead while I slept on a flight to the US. I only realised while I was washing my hands after taking a piss in the arrivals hall in Chicago, AFTER going through US Border Security and Customs. The immigration officer never flinched.

He was very fond of a scary box. A scary box being some corrugated cardboard packaging big enough to conceal a person. This box would be placed back-stage, generally close to the production office. An unwary passer-by would be engaged in casual conversation next to the box usually by Quinner, our tour manager for over a decade, who loved practical jokes. Once Quinner had the mark chatting away he would drop the day’s predetermined cue —something like, “I thought they had invented a cure for that” —at which point Buddy would burst from the box roaring like a mad bear. As the day progressed, crowds would be seen hanging around the box, as much to see how Quinner would lead the conversation with the mark to the cue as to watch the victim shit themselves when Buddy jumped out of the box.

He invented Beaching. Chris Rea’s ‘On The Beach’ was all over MOR radio when we first toured the states. Buddy, sat on a beach in New Jersey started to riff on the song, rapping on the odours that periodically escaped from the plaster-cast on his leg —an improvised haiku about the difficulties of paediatric hygiene when your foot is in plaster and you are stuck living on a bus with ten blokes travelling around the USA. In the rhythm of an irritating Chris Rea guitar riff —Beaching. Genius at work.

Ooh bee doop doop.

He could do flawless impersonations of Billy Connolly, Sean Connery, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Jimmy Saville and Chewbacca (the last requiring an empty pint glass, something that he generally had to hand).

He introduced Del Amitri to three thousand people in a sold-out theatre, as a fictional Rotterdam promoter named Nippi Hoep who sounded exactly like a Dutch Sean Connery, as “Everybodysh shecond favourite Shcottish rock band”.

He started a long US tour with a broken ankle in a plaster-of-paris caste (the broken ankle having been sustained while showing off on a skateboard at production rehearsals.) Two weeks later, unable to find a hospital in Hollywood that would remove it, he took it off himself in the tour bus with the saw attachment in a Swiss Army knife.

Das Spiegelei liegt auf dem Boden.

In his merciless pursuit of a laugh there could be collateral damage:

Scene: Sound check at a support show in a large arena in the USA. Crew and house staff are milling around the stage and auditorium while we soundcheck.

BIG DADDY nick-named (by BUDDY of course) in affectionate acknowledgement of his outsize cuddliness is a hot-shot American sound engineer / tour manager who has flown in to cover for our regular guy for two weeks on a long US tour. He is in the technical area behind a large mixing desk 50m out front of the stage.

BIG DADDY (though a live microphone) —Folks said I looked like Matt Damon when I was younger.

BUDDY (back from the stage, without looking up from tuning a guitar, also through a live microphone) —Well now you fucken look like you’ve eaten Matt Damon.

‌
Scene: At dinner in a bustling, backstage catering room in the middle of a long tour somewhere in England. ABEL RABEL and BUDDY are sitting facing each other across a table surrounded by various cast members eating and chatting.

ABEL RABEL —So Colesey.

ABEL RABEL —Right, Colesey.

ABEL RABEL —Colesey has the back off. He has the back off during the show.

(BUDDY, looks up from eating soup and raises his left eyebrow.)

ABEL RABEL —Right. He’s in there, with the back off.

pause (BUDDY returns to eating soup)

ABEL RABEL —Colesey’s in there, with the back off while the The Mish are on stage, during the show, he has the back off and he’s in there.

(ABEL RABEL chuckles to himself. BUDDY raises both eyebrows.)

ABEL RABEL —Colesey is in the back with a screwdriver, while the Mish are on stage.

(BUDDY puts his spoon down and looks directly at ABEL RABEL.)

ABEL RABEL —During the show.

short pause

BUDDY —What? That’s fucking it! A bloke with a screwdriver. That’s the fucking story?
[ABEL RABEL subsequently got short shrift if he ever tried to tell another of his dull tour stories in company.]

He made Marc Piers cry with laughter. Every day.

Now then. Now then. I have a letter here from a lovely young man in Stoke:
Dear Jim,
Can you fix it for me to get out of this box?
And now, Showaddywaddy...

He tried to treat acute sunburn by tying plastic bags of chopped onions around his feet on the advice of Abel Rabel. It’s an old Polish remedy, apparently. Takes the heat out of the burns as the onions cook, apparently. (The sunburn was the result of falling asleep in the shade on a poolside lounger at the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel and waking up in the sun). The chopped onions were ordered from room service, but LA being LA, delivered without question. There was no noticeable relief from the sunburn but it took many days and nights for his feet, socks and trainers to stop smelling of fried onions. I seem to remember that a Beaching haiku was inspired by this incident but sadly it has been lost from collective memory. Is it ever actually sunny in Poland anyway?

Andy, our piano player has spent a good deal of his professional playing time on stage in fear of being goosed with a broom handle. Buddy had identified various points in the performance where Andy had all four limbs engaged in operating his keyboards and was therefore unable to manoeuvre his arse more than a few inches without dropping a note. Buddy would, without fail, have concealed himself in the drapes behind Andy, broom at the ready to worry that arse. Every night, at the same moment in the same song. On one tour a very long extensible pole of undetermined purpose was obtained from an army surplus store to facilitate this from far away in the the wings thus allowing Buddy to goose Andy while still being properly attentive to his paid position. But in spite of the increased comic potential the apparatus promised it proved difficult to handle and was abandoned after a couple of nights in preference of the trusty broom and / or mop that is present on every theatre stage.

Crazy bonk bonk.

He lay on his back beside me on a frost covered lawn in the Scottish Highlands on a cloudless, moonless night and we drank whisky to keep warm and saw shooting stars and watched satellites move slowly across the heavens.

He wanted to make people laugh and he did. Buddy has been described as the funniest person I have ever known by, well almost everyone who ever knew him.

But he also wanted something that life never gave him.

From his perspective the drugs and the alcohol made him funnier and they made him seem even funnier if you were on that roll with him, and that took its toll. That and the sixty B&H a day he smoked in his heyday. The drugs consumption became a bit less prodigious in his latter years but the alcohol was always there. More than once in candid, conversations I told him I thought the only solution he had to some of the shit life was throwing his way was to stop drinking. Straight back, without a moment’s consideration,
—I wouldn’t be me without the drink.
And what is the riposte to that? The last time I saw Buddy he quickly turned the conversation from the problems mounting in his life to recounting and reliving stories, still revelling in seeing the people around him laughing. There won’t be another one like him along for a long while.