Scare Tale

Welcome to South Manchester on a very rainy early December Saturday. I was at yet another gig last night – the penultimate one of 2025 – and I saw Madness, a pop band from the 1980’s who, after all this time, are still performing. It was a real blast from the past.

I think Madness are only well known in the UK and haven’t really drifted towards the States (I may be wrong here), probably because they are a slightly eccentric band (as the name suggests). They are known as “The Nutty Boys” because all of their songs are light-hearted and their videos are funny. 

Here is a taste. 

I missed the FIFA World Cup draw because of the gig but in a way I am very glad I did. Apparently it was a total farce and the president of FIFA even presented the Orange Goblin with the inaugural FIFA “Peace Prize” presumably to satisfy his huge ego after the Nobel committee quite rightly decided that there is no way on God’s Earth that Donald Trump could receive the Nobel Peace Prize. 

Watching America from afar at the moment is like watching a soap opera with the Orange Blimp at the centre of it all. It would be hilarious if it weren’t so scary. 

Anyway, sorry for that political mini-rant; let’s answer some daft questions from Sunday Stealing. 

1. What was the scariest thing in the world to you when you were a kid? Does it still scare you now?

I was terrified of anything that was related to Satan, including and especially vampires. My dad allowed me to watch “Dracula” the Hammer horror version with Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing. I was twelve years old. You may think he was cruel but he did this to teach me a lesson because I constantly pestered him about it. The film scared me shitless and I hardly slept for a couple of nights. 

I think the root of my fear was the fact that at that time I was in the middle of a sixteen year indoctrination into the Roman Catholic church. I went to a Roman Catholic junior school until the age of ten and all the teachings were (and still are) in my head. To me, the vampire mythos was terrifying and vampires were demons from the bowels of hell itself. 

It wasn’t just vampires. I watched another Hammer horror film as a slightly older kid called “The Devil Rides Out” based on a novel by Dennis Wheatley and that too was terrifying because it featured Satan himself. 

Worse, I watched “The Omen” and that movie had further elements about the Catholic church and the Antichrist himself. The final straw was The Exorcist, which I saw at the age of 18 and is still the scariest movie I have ever seen, because it deals with demonic possession and all that entails. 

These days, I have a more rational and scientific mind. I haven’t been a regular churchgoer since the age of 16 and I question everything now, particularly the roles of God and Satan in my life. I don’t want to start a post on religion because it can be a very divisive subject to debate but the bottom line is that my logical and scientific mind makes me question everything.  

What I do know is that vampires do not exist and I seriously doubt if the demons and other hellish entities do either. I now embrace horror fiction and I have loved rewatching those old movies with a clearer and less indoctrinated brain. 

That said – I have only seen The Exorcist that one time. It scared me so much that I am actually wary about watching it again. I guess some of that fear still exists.

2. Imagine your 12-year-old daughter (or granddaughter) is hosting a sleepover at your home. A sudden storm knocks out cellphone service, wifi and cable. How would you keep these suddenly unplugged pre-teens entertained?

 When my kids were that age, we used to play board games such as Monopoly. At one point I had three different versions of it; a Manchester one, a Star Wars one and a Simpson’s one. It was good fun. 

These days there are so many board games that I can barely keep up with them. I think such things could keep a twelve year old entertained for a few hours. 

3. What piece of movie or TV memorabilia would you love to own?

Way back in 1989, I went to the United States for the first time and on that trip, I visited Universal Studios in Los Angeles which I thoroughly enjoyed. Two things stuck with me from that trip. 

The first were props from the 1960’s TV show Land of the Giants, one in particular being an giant telephone. The second was KITT, the car from Knight Rider, which was parked on a little island on it’s own. I crossed the bridge to have my photo taken with it and it started talking to me, opening with:

“Are you just going to stand there putting your dirty fingerprints all over my bodywork or are you going to have a chat?”

So from that trip, I would have both the phone and KITT. 

And of course, I am a huge fan of Dr Who and from that show, perhaps a replica TARDIS and a Dalek. 

All of this is straight out of the Big Bang Theory and I know that I haven’t enough room for any of them really. Besides, Mrs PM would never allow it. 

4. You are gifted with the services of a personal assistant for four hours. What would you ask your assistant to do?

 I have a few things on my “To Do” list that I need to do but haven’t got around to doing yet (because of a melange of laziness and procrastination). I think there is about four hours work there – and if there isn’t I would ask Mrs PM to fill up the remaining time from her “To Do” list. 

5. If literary characters were real, which one would you like to interview, and what would you ask?

I would probably interview the “Time Traveller” from “The Time Machine” by H. G. Wells. In that book he travels forward in time from 1895 to the year 802,701. The first thing I would ask him would be “Can I have a go?” followed closely by “Why didn’t you travel into the past instead?”