PRESENTER: Tonight on “Behind the Drugs” we look at the career of one of rock’s biggest and baddest bands. A band whose name is synonymous with debauchery and excess – The Happy Sunshine Bunnies.
(Pause)
Well, perhaps they could have chosen a better name. But who can forget their alcohol-soaked antics and their drug-fuelled orgies? I spoke to band members Tommy Kittenfur and Roger Petaldew about those days.
TOMMY: Awww man – it was great – the drugs - the women – the men – the farmyard animals. It was like a party without end. Well… except that it did end eventually.
ROGER: Yeah. Apart from it ending it was like a party without end.
PRESENTER: And of course there was your infamous, “Ride a Cock Horse” album which was so incredibly offensive that even Satan disassociated himself from the project.
ROGER: That’s right. That album was banned in the UK, the US… er… Canada, France, Trinidad and Tobago… Sweden…
TOMMY: Actually, I think it was banned everywhere. No-one has ever heard the album…
ROGER: …just as well really.
PRESENTER: But years of hanging out in studios with musicians took its toll. The band imploded when Roger learned that Tommy had begun to experiment with music.
TOMMY: Like everyone, I thought I could handle it. And like… all the other musicians were doing it – Ozzy, Lemmy… Rick Astley… There’s a lot of pressure, you know? I remember I went over to Paul McCartney’s for some grass and he took me into his back room… and he… forced me down… and he… played the piano – while I… I…
ROGER: (Patting Tommy’s hand) I’m here for you Tommy.
TOMMY: …I accompanied him on the mandolin. (Bursts into tears).
ROGER: I had no idea…
TOMMY: That’s right. Rodge had no idea. I would sneak off to the bog – do a line of music, then maybe a couple of lyrics to come down - and then back to the rampant drug-taking and promiscuous sex with hermaphrodite dwarves.
PRESENTER: But as Tommy’s involvement with music escalated, it was inevitable that the rampant hedonism would suffer. New Musical Express judged their 1987 orgy “a sub-Zeppelin bore”. While Rolling Stone said it was “a pale re-tread of earlier triumphs”. The Sun was more explicit when it asked the question, “Has Tommy’s Penis Fallen Off?”
ROGER: I’d reached breaking point. I tried to talk to Tommy about it –
TOMMY: It got ugly. Rodger took a swing at me - I offered to teach him tantric yoga at a health spa.
ROGER: So I staged an intervention – there was me, Shane Magowan, Pete Doherty, Tommy Lee and some bloke from the alley who smelled of wee.
TOMMY: They told me some hard truths about myself. How I was on the road to self-construction and that if I didn’t buck my ideas down I would probably live past the age of thirty.
ROGER: It was devastating. I could tell he was shaken up by that one.
TOMMY: But you can’t make an ex-junkie not stop quitting the drugs. You have to hit rock bottom. You have to truly debase yourself.
ROGER: That’s why I didn’t say anything when I heard that Tommy was collaborating with Sting.
PRESENTER: In desperation, Roger decided to go his own way and form a new band called “Rusty Trombone” with Gloria Hunniford and Noel Edmonds.
ROGER: The name was Gloria’s.
PRESENTER: Meanwhile – Tommy reached an all-time low, when he collaborated with Sir Elton John on the musical adaptation of “Snakes on a Plane”.
TOMMY: That’s right. I won the Grammy for my lyrics to the song, “Can You Feel The Mofo’ Love Tonight?”
PRESENTER: It was at this point that Tommy underwent the final humiliation of becoming a UN goodwill ambassador and adopted a Somalian orphan.
TOMMY: I realised that I’d hit rock-bottom. I was on 2 or 3 Africans a day at that time. Then I moved onto the harder stuff – the Asians, the South Americans. I remember Brad Pitt called and screamed at me when I refused him an Asian village and a Nicaraguan land-mine victim. It was then I knew I needed help so I called Rodge and said… what did I say Rodge…?
ROGER: Sod this, let’s get pissed.
TOMMY: It was something like that.
ROGER: No, I mean… sod this – let’s get pissed.
TOMMY Oh yeah, nice one mate!
ROGER AND TOMMY LEAVE
PRESENTER: Well… that appears to wrap up tonight’s story. Next week we look at the career of the Coldplay frontman in “Chris Martin – Genius or Insufferably Smug Goody-Two-Shoes With An Annoying Wife?”
Noooooo... I've just been offline for ages. I won't say why, but I hope you would all join me in cursing Telewest to be visited by a plague of locusts.
It's good to be back. Isn't it flash though? As an old bugger I find it all very intimidating.
