- "He's
happy/He's naughty/The
- geezer's
over 40!" sings Lisa Moorish
- on
Fat Les' new single.
"Dodgy lyric
I love you! I want to be
beside you! Come here please!" replies
a green-painted Keith Allen, thrusting
his groin and hopping around the room
dressed as a priapic goblin at the
video-shoot for his band's new single.
Come and meet Fat Les. Here's ex-
borstal boy Keith Allen. Hard-man Keith
is 45 years old and not very tall and he
rules the luwie world with two fists of
iron, a gob like a sewer and a head full
of high explosives (although, given the
fact that your average actor is a
simpering poodle with a glass jaw, a
rubber backbone and disappearingly
small genitalia, he'd probably do just as
well with a semi-inflated balloon on a
balsa-wood stick). Dressed in mucho-
macho gay leather gear for NMEs
photo-shoot, Keith is preening himself
in the studio mirror like a peacock on
Prozac. Then he tums to the rest of Fat
Les and snarls: "I'm the only one who
looks like a proper psycho bum-bandit!
The rest of you look like you're going to
a fucking fancy dress party!"
"Psycho bum-bandits" have been
something of a recurring theme in
Keith's career. There was his stand-up
character, Gerry Arkwright, a northem
industrial gay who kept pigeons and
reckoned that only 'puffs' did it with
women. There was Boots Man Dread,
the gay Rasta. And who can ever forget
The Buishiffers, where Keith ran around
London in a leather jacket and ultra-
tight saUn underpants, having been
driven to deviancy by a sinister "gay
serum"? It's a safe bet, then, that the
idea of dressing Fat Les up as '70s pop
i~ons the Village People originated with
Keith. Because Keith is loud, sexy, rude,
subversive, vulgar and occasionally
nasty. He's rough trade personified.
And he's a good bloke. official.
Meet amiable Joe Strummer. Joe,
believe it or not, used to be the glottal-
stop-gobbed lead singer with punk
kings The Clash, who were not only
the direct inspiration for the Manics
(back when they were brilliant) but were
also unarguably the best band in the
world. Ever. Joe now lives in a
farmhouse in Somerset where he quite
often dresses a cowboy.
Meet Alex James, the pretty one from
Blur. God, does he look subversively
sexy in his motorcycle cop gear or
what!? Although jet-lagged to buggery
and soon to be pissed out of his tiny
mind, floppy-fringed, Justine-from-
Elastica lookalike Alex is unfailingly
pleasant, polite and friendly. Because
he too is a good bloke. Official.
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And,
finally, meet Damien Hirst.
Damien is a bit of a bastard.
NMEs trying to be friendly, like,
trying to break the ice in a not too
bleeding obviously arselicky manner
by engaging Britain's top artist, who
is dressed as a Sioux warrior, in a
conversation about PlayStation.
"You don't like Tomb Raider? Well
you can Fuck oft!" growls the enfant
terrible of shark embalming. And it's not
a jolly, only-joking, hail-fellow-well-met
sort of "fuck off". It's not a nice
fuck
off". Oh no. It's a 'fuck off you
unimportant little person before I chain
saw your stinking carcass in half,
then stick the bits in tanks of
formaldehyde and sell them to that
evil bastard who used to run Mrs
Thatcher's favourite ad agency, you
insignificant piece of loathsome shit!'
sort of fuck off. And then he beats his
chest and roars like a bull gorilla.
"I phoned them up and said,
'I'm Damien Hirst! Give me Tomb
Raider 3 for free!' and they said,
'Fuck off! You can buy it like
everybody else!' Fuckers!"
Anyway, sickeningly flattering
personality profiles over, let's talk
about the record, shall we?
FAT LES' FOLLOW-UP TO
the phenomenally successful,
amazingly clever AND incredibly
dumb 'Vindalop' is called 'Naughty
Christmas (Goblin In The Office)' and
it's a legs-spread, conga-driven,
Scotch-sodden, gin-engorged Carry
On-style badsexfest celebration of the
modern British Christmas office party -
ie, the most sordid ritual in the history of
the homo sapiens species.
You've either been there and been
shagged and later shuddered in shame
as the Alka-Seltzer plink-plinked and
the sperm'n'vomit dried with a horribly
audible creak on the lapels of your one
good suit or party frock OR you've seen
it featured in too many dodgy '70s Brit
sitcoms for comfort. You know what
we're talking about here. You know
what happens when the British office
drones - the most repressed
representatives of the most repressed
nation in the entire history of the world
let their knickers down. 'Cos it don't
matter a guilty toss that foreplay, KY
Jelly, hardcore anal pom movies and
the increasingly ubiquitous 14-inch
strap-on dildo are now to be found in
the bedrooms, kitchens and custom-
built torture chambers of Mr and Mrs
Happily Married Thank You Very Much
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Heterosexual
Middle England. Oh no.
For this is still Britain, the nation where
sex ie. either rude, naughty, smutty,
shameful, sick, perverted, obscene and
absolutely disgusting - or it's just not
worth doing. Oh yes. And Fat Les - as
the self-appointed official executioners
of Cool Britannia - have used the form
of the trad Brit novelty Christmas 45 to
bring us face to screaming face with the
sad and sordid reality of our own shit
sex-lives in the sperm-spattered shape
of the gibberingly intoxicated,
nauseatingly neanderthal, knee-
trembling, top-of-the-Xerox Xmas office
party shag. The bastards. And - oh look
- Damien, posing for a photo, has got
his dick out. Well there's one that won't
make the front cover. More's the pity.
Last night Keith was in LA and Alex
was in New York and Joe was in
Taunton and Damien was in a bad
mood - as usual - and now they're in
a pub. It's pantomime time. The two
internationally recognised pop stars
have bottled it back into dead dull
ciwies but dirty-mouthed Damien is
still dressed as a gay Indian and Keith
still looks like he's walked straight off
the set of Power Tool Anal Holocaust
Two. And nobody blinks an eye.
Nobody titters or points. Nobody
threatens to drag them into the car park
and beat them into a broken-boned and
blood-spurting pulp for daring to be
different. What is happening to this
country!? These are weird and
wonderful times and Fat Les are surely
the blister-palmed embodiment of the
rapidly mutating national sexual
zeitgeist. Fat Les are brilliant! Fat Les
are eager for the interview to start! And
Fat Les are pissed.
Be warned, readers, we are about
to embark on a journey into the heart
of darkness.
Fat Les, do you think Christmas is
under-commercialised?
"No.1 think it's over-commercialised.
In a commercial way," says Keith,
confusingly. "But if you were to ask me
if Christmas is under-commercialised or
undersold in a spiritual way, then, yeah,
definitely. It should be a cause for great
celebration."
Are we talking about the birth of
Jesus here?
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