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174 pages

English

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In nineties small-town Surrey, watching Top of the Pops was Malcolm's only escape from boredom and the bullies at school... until a phone call from a pop star changed his life forever. Before long, he was getting compliments from Beyonce, hanging out at award ceremonies with Posh Spice's mum and sneaking onto All Saints' tour bus.Freak Like Me is the true story of one teenage pop fan who, with a group of like-minded outcasts, witnesses the disposable music industry of the late nineties and early noughties first-hand. Tracking down A-lister itineraries, he gets to meet the real personalities behind the Smash Hits posters adorning his bedroom walls.This hilarious memoir is packed with scandalous gossip and poignant memories from the era of Nokia 3310s and dial-up Internet, when chart positions meant everything and, if you wanted to know what your idols were up to off-screen, you had to track them down yourself!PRAISE FOR FREAK LIKE ME"A hilarious, nostalgic memoir packed full of scandalous gossip. We couldn't put it down!"-Closer magazine?"Pop fans, this one is for you."-GQ magazine?"Malcolm's memoir of his time as a teenage superfan around the turn of the millennium offers a fascinating, funny and often unexpected journey through several shifts in pop, as he views the changing world through a life of pop fandom."-Complete Music Update "I love this book."-Jamie East (talkRADIO)?"Loved it...if you call yourself a hun, you NEED to read this book."-Hunsnet?"Hilarious...packed full of gossip."-Bella magazine?"Freak Like Me is like slipping into a warm bath of memories of watching my favourite groups on Top of the Pops, Live & Kicking and SM:TV/CD:UK, taping songs off the radio and reading Smash Hits...I haven't come across any book, TV show or website that has taken me back quite so completely...reading this book felt a lot like exchanging memories with a friend. McLean strikes exactly the right balance between the good and bad of the 90s, and brings the era back to life just as I remember it. His snarky humour made me snort out loud at times, my heart warmed when he found friends who shared his obsessions, and his anecdotes were so, so relatable...I would love to see more books like this."-Dr Alice Violett (book blogger)?"Freak Like Me has you hooked from the opening chapter...a laugh out loud, and endearing coming of age novel about a young teen finding himself, coming out and how the celebrities of the 90s helped him figure out and accept who he was. An absolute must-read, for lovers of 90s and early 00s pop music, and those who have ever wondered what it would be like to meet their idols."-Fuzzable

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Lettres et linguistique

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Publié par	Distributed by eBookpartnership
Date de parution	10 mars 2019
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781913227258
Langue	English

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Extrait

FREAK
LIKE
ME
FREAK
LIKE
ME
confessions of a 90s pop groupie
MALCOLM McLEAN
Published by RedDoor
www.reddoorpublishing.com
© 2019 Malcolm McLean
The right of Malcolm McLean to be identified as author of this Work has been asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, copied in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise transmitted without written permission from the author
The stories in this book reflect the author’s recollection of events. Some names and identifying characteristics have been changed to protect the privacy of those depicted. Dialogue has been recreated from memory. Every effort has been made to trace the owners of copyright material reproduced herein. The publisher would like to apologise for any omissions and will be pleased to incorporate missing acknowledgements in the any future editions.
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Cover design: Clare Connie Shepherd
www.clareconnieshepherd.com
Typesetting: Tutis Innovative E-Solutions Pvt. Ltd
Prologue
February 1999
‘ I can’t believe it… we’ve got in! That was so easy. We’re actually here!’ I thought to myself. I’m trying my best to look blasé and important, but my excited eyes, darting around the room, are telling a different story. At least it’s dark in here.
‘Oh my God, that’s Boy George! And there’s Mark Owen!’ Gemma squeals as we casually start to wander round the room.
‘CALM DOWN, GUYS,’ Steph urges. ‘Just be cool.’ She was older and wiser than the rest of us. She was leading this whole escapade… and I was one of her accomplices.
‘I can see some of Five!’ Charlotte exclaims. ‘And that’s Sharleen from Texas!’
We shuffle in a big loop around the arena, all six of us. Up we walk, through each tier of candlelit tables, the hubbub of small talk and cutlery clinking on porcelain, interspersed with corks popping and staff in black waistcoats asking ‘Red or white, madam?’ My mind’s going crazy. This is utter madness. It’s Tuesday evening of half term and I’m fifteen years old! And what if we get caught? What would they do to us? At least if we get thrown out now this will still have been the most ridiculous thirty minutes of my entire life. There we were, roaming around undetected, with fake passes around our necks at the biggest showbiz event in the music calendar – where few fans had ever gone before – the BRIT Awards . Unfortunately, other than ‘get in’, there was no plan.
We keep walking, milling past table after table of industry execs. ‘Shit, that food looks good right now!’ Charlotte says, clutching her stomach. I’m not even hungry. We’re all acting unnaturally; trying to look relaxed and important, that was the main thing we discussed outside. ‘Don’t look nervous!’ – I can hear Steph's pep talk from the car park going round and round in my head. It’s a lot to think about when you’re swaggering past waiters and Security, trying hard not to trip over each other.
We weren’t the sons and daughters of pop stars or industry bigwigs, we’d made this happen ourselves – the impossible. I can’t believe we’ve fooled everyone with these forged passes. Access All Areas! Who do they think we are? We’d all wanted to go so badly, for as long as we could remember, years before Ginger Spice had stepped out on that stage in her Union Jack dress, two years ago.
‘Right, let’s try to go backstage,’ Steph said, boldly.
‘Okay, why not? Let’s just do it!’ replied Charlotte.
We’d got this far, so we thought we might as well try our luck.
‘I think I know the way. Follow me …’ said Paul.
‘No, he’s wrong! I saw it on the way in. Follow me,’ Gemma assured. She was always confident, but it usually worked.
So, there we were, six music-loving teenagers who’d hit the jackpot. We were possessed by pop. But we didn’t just want to listen to it, we wanted to live it. Whatever it took to get close to our favourite bands. Devious tricks, careful planning, steely determination or just sheer luck. By skipping school or sleeping in train stations, airports or Hyde Park we’d managed to meet anyone who was anyone in the pop industry. It was all a far cry from my dull suburban life at home.
1
I’ll Be There for You
S econdary school is a human zoo of hormones. A teenage day prison, with marginally less violence. The first few weeks are make or break, establishing the pecking order for all the years that follow: show them you won’t take any shit and you’ll be fine. But I wasn’t that kind of person in 1994. As a shy eleven-year-old, who had moved to a new town and started secondary school as The New Kid, I adopted the desperate ‘keep-your-head-down’ approach as my survival tactic. However, when the first festive season arrived – and I’d acquired a couple of friends I could hover on the edges of the playground with – I made the brave but ill-advised decision to volunteer to open the school’s Christmas carol concert. Clearly, I wasn’t blessed with common sense, but I was quite a musical child. I mean, I played no instruments, but growing up, I’d liked dancing to Mum’s Donna Summer LPs, could recite most songs from her Rodgers and Hammerstein VHS collection, and had literally competed with other boys at primary school to win the part of singing ‘Walking in the Air’ from The Snowman in the final-year carol service. My Year Six classmates had thought I was fantastic for it. I really think this’ll clinch my popularity , I thought, as I volunteered at my new school, despite literally no one else putting themselves forward. Funny that.
On the big night, I sang a window-shattering falsetto solo of ‘Once in Royal David’s City’, looking angelic holding a candle and pretending to read music from a stand covered in holly. Even our RE teacher Mrs Casha (think Miss Trunchbull from Matilda , but with a buzz cut) was crying in the front row. I guessed they were tears of joy. In hindsight she was probably envisaging me getting my head kicked in a couple of years later.
I’d be lying if I said I hadn’t loved the attention. I liked standing out from the other kids who couldn’t sing for shit. Though hardly Aled Jones, I could warble in tune, even if my soprano tones were never going to nab me a Charlotte Church five-album opera deal. Some kids made the odd cruel comment afterwards, but in general, as eleven-year-olds, most kids are too young to have found their voice and strength yet, and I was able to brush them off and bask in the minor praise I got from the more musical of my peers. I was too busy loving my five minutes of fame in a world where the football team ruled the school and all other boys were ignored. Afterwards, I was longing to do it all again; to lap up the applause and see their smiling faces. To let my inner performer shine. Unfortunately, puberty had other ideas.

All I ever knew, growing up, was suburban Surrey. Mile after mile of mock Tudor, privet hedges and block-paved driveways. We lived on Rosefield Gardens. It was a road to nowhere (literally, it was a cul-de-sac). The quaint name belies a sinister world of curtain-twitching septuagenarians existing on a diet of Daily Telegraph , lawn bowls and boredom. As a child I was oblivious to this. All I cared about was the fact I was now old enough to have a room of my own, free from the shackles of an older sister obsessed with Alan Shearer. Football wasn’t on my radar. I was more into Disney songs and hanging out with my nan.
We grew up in a village called Ottershaw, sandwiched between Chertsey and Woking. It was not what most people would call a village, more a suburb of a suburb, separated by golf courses and the odd paddock, thereby earning itself the right to a separate identity. It’s under a mile from Ottershaw to the M25, but the divide it created might as well have been a hundred wide. It separated civilisation from barbarism; world city from provincial backwater – and we were plonked on the wrong side of it. You could never escape the constant whirring hum; it was the aural backdrop to my childhood. The motorway even lopped off a corner of the school playing fields, selling short one vision of the future in the name of another. All that separated us from it was a flimsy wire fence – I’m sure that was great for my asthma.
Apart from bike racing and roller skating around the close, we passed the time browsing the labyrinth of floor-to-ceiling VHSs to rent at Ottershaw Wines. This was not just an off-licence, it was almost a department store with bottles of mediocre wines at the back, and the whole front of the shop dedicated to videocassettes. Sleepless in Seattle sandwiched between the toffee popcorn and their extensive porn section.
Pre-Internet, our lives revolved around telly. Saturday nights in the nineties were spent flicking between Noel’s House Party , Stars in Their Eyes , and if we were really desperate, Big Break . This was the age in which blokes potting balls in comedy waistcoats constituted entertainment.
My dad, Ron, was a manager at a local copper tube company. Riveting! Despite this being well into the nineties he still hadn’t got rid of his Tom Selleck moustache. Looks-wise, he was a cross between Father Ted and Ned Flanders. Personality-wise too, come to think of it. Dad is one of the loveliest men you could ever meet. He would do anything for us.
But, The Flanders we weren’t. We were undeniably Simpsons. My sister Anja, a year above me at school, was a studious book-lover, although definitely wilder than Lisa Simpson. I was like Bart in that I spent most of the nineties playing out in the cul-de-sac with our little sister Sophie: our favourite pastime involved tying the skateboard to my BMX and pulling her down the road at a rapid rate of knots until she flew off when I took a sharp corner. That, or the mattress-down-the-stairs game when Mu