A Tonic for The Droops?

It was finally the day.  I was to get to see my teenage heart-throb Bob Geldof perform in little ol’ Grassington with (OMG!) The Boomtown Rats! I’d had the Festival tickets for months (thank you, Mark) and today was the day.  Then, halfway through the morning, disaster struck in the form of a migraine.

As I retreated to a darkened bedroom armed with Naramig I ruefully recalled a similar occasion when, as a child, I had been promised that for the first time I could stay up for Mum & Dad’s annual New Year’s Eve party. Hugely excited, I was floored late afternoon that day by what we referred to in those days as ‘a sick headache’. I still remembered the disappointment and irony as if it was yesterday.

Determined this time not to miss out completely on the Rats gig, I emerged several hours later, grey, wobbly and still nursing the headache from hell. Droopy wasn’t even close to how rough I still felt.

Good though they no doubt were, all I remember of the support band’s set was a lead female singer, wishing they would stop, and seriously doubting my ability to stay upright and functioning.  And then came the perfect antidote to my post-migraine malaise, a complete ‘tonic for the droops’ as Bob bounded onto the stage.

Before I even realised what I was doing, I found myself screaming like a loon.  Fortunately I wasn’t the only one.  With all the charisma that had charmed me at the age of 14, thirty six years later this man still had the energy and raw talent to electrify the whole marquee.

You see, I was a Geldof fan in ’78, years before he won the hearts of the rest of the world with his (and Midge Ure’s) ground-breaking fundraiser Live Aid in 1985. He outstripped David Soul (aka Hutch) as the pin-up poster feeding my fantasies from the walls of my bedroom, while my bestie Michelle adored the pyjama-ed Jonny Fingers (ditching Starsky).

It all began with my boyfriend of the time, Carl Thompson (where are you now?), whose only legacy beyond the gradual and premature erosion of my innocence was to introduce me to The Boomtown Rats.  I remember walking with him up Church Way in Weston Favell to get the bus into Northampton one Saturday afternoon listening to his very poor rendition of She’s A Modern Girl “Ya ya ya yaya”.  It was getting on my nerves.  And then….I heard the actual record.   It wasn’t long before I was hooked, and my love of the The Boomtown Rats turned out to be a lot more enduring than that particular relationship!

Now in June 2014, despite the 1970’s lyrics, the Rats regaled us with that same song, along with every other enduring hit single from Looking After Number One through to Banana Republic.   I was also delighted they played my personal favourites from the albums, Joey’s on the Street Again (complete with Bob’s moving explanation of the background to the song) and Eva Braun from Tonic to the Troops (yes, hence Droops for those of you who missed the reference). I was delighted that we even got a steamy Mary of the Fourth Form, which probably only just squeaked through today’s PC sensors.

It would be unfair on the band to say it was all about Bob, as the rest of them played superlatively and it was great to see them all (though I did miss those pyjamas), but Bob’s magnificent performance was so riveting it was hard to take our eyes off him.  Beyond the professional excellence of his showmanship, when I forced my way through to almost the front I could see the age, tiredness and sadness that lay underneath, but somehow that made the whole performance even more poignant.  There was almost a collective gasp rippling through the audience as he sang the line from I Don’t Like Mondays “their thoughts turned to their only little girl”.  With the death of his daughter, Peaches, being so recent, some had speculated that Bob would not even perform, but I was never in any doubt that he would; he’s a world-class performer and as such knows ‘the show must go on’, however hard that may be.

Throughout the gig, through all the jumping up and down, screaming, singing and recording on my phone, I had clutched by my side my two original LPs.  After the gig, like the teen groupie I still was at heart, I waited for an hour round the back of the marquee, cold and eaten alive by midges; but it was worthwhile.  I got my albums signed and better still got to hug that wonderful man.  He was clearly exhausted and desperate to get back to their hotel, but was decent enough to acknowledge the small group of us who’d waited outside the corporate hospitality tent to see him. I was gutted not to get a photo with him due to some issues with my phone (great shots of the grass), but the memory will stay with me forever; a teenage dream come true and a highlight of my half century year.