The Soul Show

The transition into earning my own money as an apprentice not only launched the bus onto the waves of alcohol, but also, with the advent of night clubs, I realised that "The Bus Stop" was not just a place to wait for that bus.

At weekends, home in Whiston, I'd slap in one of those new fangled "compact cassettes" and record two full hours of the weekly Liverpool Soul Show on Radio City. As I said, it was 1974 and that was a very great time to be waking up to all the music.

I didn't know there was anything better after I discovered my own version of soul music, washed down with a goodly portion of rum and coke, that's coke by the way, the fizzy pop and not the crap that you stuff up your nose.

A seventeen year old whiter than white boy, brought up on his brothers records, suddenly out in the world on his own and finding the essential music that made his compass point in one direction.

It was a shame a consequence of all this night clubbing was eventually women, and that my invisible friends was the beginning of the end.