We played the Academy in Birmingham and the place was packed and the show came off really well. Afterward, I went to a bar next door and bumped into a load of fans who were very nice and kind and bought me more rounds than I could consume! later, a nice couple let me join them on a taxi ride and dropped me off at my hotel, at about 2 am. I went to the hotel bar to find Anna, Bjorn, Andreas, and Oscar drinking beers. The bar had closed but Anna went to her room and brought down a bottle of Merlot. We then started playing pool but there wasn’t a pool stick so we used a chopstick! After a while we got frustrated and everyone called it a night.

The next morning, when we checked out of our hotel, there was a woman yelling at the receptionist about aliens and her room and a taxi and meeting several men and her shouting into a telephone (we doubted if anyone was on the other line) and she just seemed completely mental! The ensemble’s bus took off an hour earlier for Liverpool around 11 am… our bus drove off at noon, only to run out of gas 5 minutes later…KOSE FORGOT TO FILL UP…and boy was Gene angry…luckily, we broke down right in front of a pub…

Mike Randle