The launch of unbreakable records

[ROUGH NOTES]

Just to get things straight, I think I know who’s who at Unbreakable Records after last week’s party. I took careful notes of what everybody told me. The main problem, though, is that they were all pretty drunk, and I’m certain that at least half of what they told me they just made up on the spot. Anyway, here goes:

Rita the Man-Eater lives with her lover, an out-of-work mime artist named Jimmy Squeezum. She told me they’ve lived together for three years and she’s a bit bored with him. Rita is my new line manager now I’m working for Unbreakable Records.

So, it turned out that Rita and Jimmy had had a furious argument before coming to the Unbreakable Records launch party. At their flat, she’d asked him to make her a coffee and he’d been so rude about it that she’d had no choice but to kick him in the bollocks. Then she ran into the kitchen, grabbed a saucepan, and cracked him over the head with it.

I must admit that I tried to impress her with my sex appeal. I told her I was a sucker for fiery women, but she said: “Stop you there, Owen. I don’t get into bed with anyone for less than a grand.” So, it’s her or the PS5… and I’m not sure that’s a comparison that’s going to sit well with her!

Rita came to the party looking like a model on the cover of a magazine, while Squeezum looked like someone had set fire to his face and then beat the flames out with a baseball bat. To get his revenge on her, Jimmy started hitting on every woman (and a few men) that he could convince to step away from the bar, dancefloor, or jacuzzi for five minutes.

Then there was Nadine, who told me she freelanced in market research. She seemed a bit glum, and when I asked her why, she said she’d just heard that her great-grandmother had died. “She went to her grave with a secret she swore never could be told,” Nadine told me. “But she wrote me a letter six weeks ago saying that after her death I could reveal it to the world by selling her story to either The Daily Express or The Daily Mail. They were the only newspapers that she trusted to properly let the public know what it was that she had kept hidden in her heart these many years.”

After she’d had a few more drinks—and after she’d slapped Jimmy’s face—Nadine sought me out in the games room and told me all. It seemed that soon after Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth the Second married Prince Philip, he had insisted that she dye her hair platinum blonde because he wanted her to look more like Marilyn Monroe. The results did not please either of the royal couple, so one of the Queen’s ladies-in-waiting was dispatched in a black cab to find a hairdresser who could reverse the damage before Elizabeth’s next public engagement, which was Royal Windsor. A hairdresser was found and brought immediately to the palace, where with patience and some ingenuity, Her Majesty’s locks were restored to their original lustre.

“And I know this,” Nadine told me, wide-eyed, “because that hairdresser was my great-grandmother. After she’d done the Queen’s barnet, she had to sign the Official Secrets Act. So she could never tell no one. It would have been treason, wouldn’t it?” She sipped her drink. “And they used to hang women for treason back then. Just look at what they did to poor Ruth Ellis.” And she started to cry, prompting Squeezum—who had appeared at her shoulder like a golem—to offer her comfort, which she repelled with main force.

I saw Ursula [Noone – Head of A&R at Unbreakable Records] shooting pool with a man clad all in black who she introduced to me as Mr White. Rita had been trying to get him to dance with her, and he admitted to me that he’d been hiding from her for most of the night. Ursula told me that Mr White was a songwriter that Unbreakable were thinking of signing. “It’s been an eventful past few years,” he told me. “I used to drive an ice-cream van, but I found that I hated kids and the only way to get through my rounds was to neck half a bottle of vodka a day. Of course, one day I got nicked outside a school. I was done for drink-driving and given a three-year ban. So I’d lost my livelihood. All my own fault. Anyway, I sold the van and used the proceeds to retrain as a magician. I fancied a dramatic change in career. Ironically, these days the only magician gigs I get are kids’ parties—and I find I hate children even more now than I did when all I had to do was sell them lollies. Karma, innit? So now I’m on this songwriting thing.” Ursula said, “We think Mr White has real talent. One of his songs—The Philippino Daleks—is brilliant. He just needs some nurturing, the silly boy.”

The party had real class. I made the mistake of saying to Mr Weller [Chief Operating Officer at Unbreakable Records] that I thought the waiter in charge of the staff bringing round the cocktails was brilliant, given that the main room of Weller Towers was, like, the size of a football pitch. “Waiter?” he replied. “Actually, he’s my butler.”

Most of the night I was drinking tequila sunrises, which turned out to be a mistake—but more about that later.

Mr W. introduced me to a guy called Blue, who looked and acted like a human scarecrow. His arms were covered with scratch marks, bruises, and cuts. Being a bit naïve, I thought maybe he was a junkie.

“No, no way,” said Blue. “Just wounds from falling down stairs and crashing into amps.” Mr Weller said that Blue could be a big star. “All he needs is a better attitude and a better haircut.” Which amused the Human Scarecrow no end.

At the other end of the room, about a stone’s throw away from the two suits of armour that guarded the doors into the drawing room, Mr Hone was being interviewed by Ali Asap from Journey Magazine. He was literally reclining on a sofa directly beneath this huge Picasso drawing of a reclining nude. That would make a great photo, I thought. I jogged over with my trusty notebook and pen to catch anything they said that might be useful for my job in A&R.

“So who actually runs Unbreakable Records?” Mr Asap was saying. Mr H. just kept shaking his head. “Gosh. I dunno really. Maybe Andy? Or perhaps Graphic Bob? Ursula? Could be me I suppose. I’ve got a terrible memory when it comes to this kind of stuff.” In my notebook I scribbled: Don’t allow Mr Hone to speak to any journalists ever again.

In a back room I found the guys from Tin Cry slumped into armchairs in front of a huge TV screen watching a crappy horror film. Tin Cry are our first major signings and all the team at Unbreakable Records had been briefed to look after them at the party and give them the full UR hospitality treatment.

“Hi, Owen,” said Nelson Moretti, the band’s brains. “Sit down and have a drink.”
“And don’t talk to us about music,” added Harley Taylor, the band’s nutcase.

It turned out that they were still recovering their faculties after their gig the previous night ended in a minor riot, after which they were harassed by the management at the hotel they were staying at.

“I blame Keith Richards,” Harley explained. “Years ago I saw him dim a too-bright lamp in a hotel room by draping his scarf over it. All I did was try to emulate Keef. How was I to know that the heat from the bulb would cause my scarf to burst into flames? All I can say is thank goodness we weren’t there when the fire broke out.”

“Still, you know, Harley?” said Nelson. “You ruined a nice scarf. And the hotel manager has reported us to the police for an alleged arson attack.”

“You know what Martin Hone said, Owen?” said Harley. “He said: ‘This is a star situation so let Ursula sort it for you.’”

Nelson asked me if I’d been given the grand tour of Weller Towers. I hadn’t.
“It’s got the lot,” he said. “Just go down those stairs and you’ve got an oval-shaped swimming pool, a gym, sauna and steam rooms, games room with proper pinball machines, a full-sized pool table, an underwater bar, a moat full of piranhas. It’s got the lot.”
“And a recording studio,” said Harley.
“Yeah. I forgot about that,” said Nelson.

After that, they just sat there watching the telly, so I split to see what else was going on.

“Go back to reading The Beano, you clog-wearing Morris dancer.”

The two to-do lists.
Half of the success of Ursula Noone is due to the no doubt unfounded rumour that she is a woman.