Brawlin' In Leeds.

The 7th of December 2011 was a special day for us. Nope, it wasn’t because it was the 1,734th day that I had successfully managed to brush my teeth without crying. And nooooooo, it wasn’t the anniversary of my illegal marriage to my third cousin Bruno (that’s the 10th of October in case you were wondering.... next year it’s our Silver Fake Wedding Anniversary. A milestone of lies). And ha ha ha, no! It’s not the day that Barry finally admitted he was actually Keanu Reeves. He’s still masquerading as ‘Barry McKenna’, even though everyone around him knows who he really is. You can’t look that much like someone and not actually be them. Plus, i’ve seen Barry answer to the name Ted ‘Theodore’ Logan on numerous occasions and he can do that thing where he mimics a guitar solo with his hands but you can actually here it. Only Keanu Reeves and the other not so famous actor from Bill & Ted can do that. See? SAME GUY.

Nope, it was a special day for us because our first ever magazine cover hit the shelves. They didn’t literally ‘hit the shelves’, they were placed professionally and neatly on the shelves by an elite team of newsagents and supermarket stock employees. The magazine in question was Kerrang! and it was a surreal experience seeing our own faces staring back at us from the magazine rack. I say staring back at us, we’re all kind of doing weird scrunched up smiles on the cover - like a tiny man was inside our respective slacks squeezing our testicles but demanding we don’t scream. Just smile. I stood by the copies for a couple of hours with one hand pointing at the magazine and the other pointing at my face but I didn’t get recognized. Barry on the other hand didn’t have to point at anything and there was a queue of people asking him to sign their copies of the The Matrix Trilogy and Speed. Someone once told me I looked like Tom Cruise but not one person wanted their copy of Top Gun signed. I’d even bought 10 copies of the seminal fighter jet movie (the only fighter jet movie?) with me incase people wanted a free copy signed. But there were no takers, those un-claimed copies will now take centre stage in my house as some makeshift stairs that lead to the top of my television. So they haven’t been bought in vain.

I should say that this whole event was taking place in Leeds, where we were playing that night. And what better place to celebrate your first magazine cover than Leeds? They have nice shops, nice people and, most importantly, a Bar Burrito - the second best Mexican food chain in the UK. So it was there we headed at lunchtime for a celebratory Mexican bundle o’ joy. I’d rank that particular burrito at about a 7.1 on the taste scale, not the best, but certainly not the worst. It was like the Everton FC of the mexican culinary world. We were playing The Cockpit, where we had played many times before - but never in the big boy room. That was where we were playing that night, and we’d sold that bitch out. Take that Leeds, selling out all over your city. Well, in mid-sized venues. The Cockpit is situated right below a train station, therefor all sorts of weird and wonderful things happen onstage to electrical instruments. Mainly it just kind of makes this noise ‘KRRRRRRRRRRIIIIGGGGHHHHRRKDPOFEJJDPJPODOJPEJKDNFOIDHF’. Very melodic. I fixed this by asking all the trains very kindly to take the night off, giving all the railway staff £30 each to go out and have a nice time and also convincing everyone who hoped to get a train home that night how nice walking in the winter time is. They all bought it.

The show itself started amazing, the whole room kicked off. In a good way. This quickly descended into a full on brawl within 30 minutes though, which is never that nice. Unless you are at WWE Royal Rumble and the brawl is happening inside the ring. If that didn’t happen you’d probably ask for your money back. But there was an actual non-fake wrestling fight taking place in the crowd, which we’ve never really experienced at one of our shows before. I dealt with it by punching each person in the crowd on the nose once so everyone felt like they’d got there monies worth, and also felt equally hard done by. After this the show resumed as normal and it was pretty great, and not a railway noise was to be heard. One of the best of the tour i'd say. A tricky disco load out after the show, as The Cockpit has club nights every night of the year and they always seem to be rammed. Apparently every night is a party in Leeds. If Paris Hilton wanted to move to the UK forever she should move to Leeds and rent a flat beside The Cockpit.

And that is all I have to say. I hope you leave feeling satisfied and also inspired. That’s all I ask.

NO PHOTOS. Here is Keanu Reeves looking exactly like Barry....