Dream Jobs: I Was A Member Of Black Lace (for 3.09 Minutes)

I always wanted to be a Rock God.

Let’s be honest, I still do.

Back in the days when smoking in the workplace was deemed to be almost obligatory, I was called into the station manager’s office. Plumes of blue-tinged smoke filled the room as John Watson sat at his desk with an ashtray in front of him. Two lit cigarettes were smouldering but when I looked around, he was the only one in the room apart from me. John picked one up, took a drag, stubbed it out then picked up the other - a novel form of chain-smoking and I had a feeling the pressure of running a radio station on an annual budget of bugger all was getting to him. “I’ve got a massive opportunity for you,” he lied. “I want you to run the summer shows.”

The Summer Shows were so important I’m going to give them capital letters. They were the stuff of legend. Throughout the long summer holidays, each town in North-East England held a gala - a move that stemmed from the area’s mining tradition and its reliance on big industry like steel and petrochemicals. From Hartlepool to Redcar, Darlington to Stokesley the summer galas were big business. These were county shows on a town by town basis. Farming, industry, food, drink (oh, lots and lots of drink) were all showcased to the people of each town who celebrated by getting completely hammered, having a few fights and falling down unconscious. Every business that needed a public presence got involved and Radio Cleveland and its rival commercial station, TFM, were right in the thick of it.

The great thing about these shows is that, due to the amount of alcohol imbibed, they created their own fair share of news stories the next day.

“Thirteen people have spent the night in police custody after fighting broke out at the Hartlepool Show. Police say they’re trying to trace those responsible for setting fire to the beer tent after they ran out of beer.”

And now I was in charge.

I had a dream. It was a dream that looked a lot like a Radio 1 Roadshow - a huge party with thousands of people dancing and enjoying themselves, a massive stage, fireworks, the lot. But then, reality struck.

Local Radio was a lot different to Radio 1.

For a start, the core audience was quite a few decades older, as was the station’s music policy. If Radio 1 was a juggernaut on the motorway of life, Local Radio was a Toyota Aygo in a quiet cul-de-sac. To make matters worse, our commercial competition from the other side of the River Tees was having a really successful year. The streets around TFM’s studios were paved with gold. It was boom-time in commercial radio and they had money to splurge: sponsored prizes, free handouts - they even had ‘goodie bags’! We had nothing. Not a penny.

Was I downhearted? Well ... a little bit if I’m honest but I had one thing they didn’t: the phone number of the firm which hired out the largest speaker systems in the North East of England and they happened to owe me a favour.

When Radio Cleveland took to the road that summer, it would do so with a PA system big enough to play Whitley Bay Ice Rink. Now It was just a question of what the crowds would be listening to.

We threw ideas around. A brass band competition? No. An Iron Maiden/ Fleetwood Mac tribute act? No. A singing completion for locals to enter? Definitely not. And then, one day, a letter landed on John Watson’s desk offering a small amount of funding for Local Radio stations to invest in live music as part of an initiative to protect and nurture the arts. I started doing my homework. It didn’t involve much art and hardly any live music.. but I reckoned we could just about push it through on a technicality. All I needed was the right act.

That week I was ‘relief presenter’ on the Afternoon Show. It was the usual fare: hobby half-hour, the jobs desk, a couple of book reviews and a live guest or two from the world of show biz. One day, in trooped Black Lace who had a new single out. It was a few years since Agadoo had stormed the charts but they were busy. The band had been featured in the British cult film Rita, Sue and Bob Too and we were due to chat about the effect the film was having on Black Lace’s career. Unfortunately, because of the lyrical content of the song they’d sung in the film it was deemed somewhat unsuitable for Radio Cleveland’s listeners.

The song was called “Gangbang”.

We chatted for twenty minutes about the song and how the film came about without either playing it or referring to its title.

It wasn’t the lightest of interviews for another reason: the membership of Black Lace had always been fluid. In the 1970’s there’d been four in the group, then two, before founder member Colin Gibb had to ‘step away’ from the group - hardly a surprise given he’d just been convicted and fined £200 for having what The Guardian called “a relationship with a 15 year old girl”. He’d been replaced with a new group member, Dene Michael for a few years but as the 80’s drew to a close, Colin had been reintegrated into the band who were now performing as a duo and it was Colin and Dene who sat opposite me in the studio.

After the show finished, I came out of the studio to find Black Lace sitting outside on the phone talking to their manager.

“Lads,” I said. “I’ve had an idea.”

A couple of days later a piece appeared in The Middlesbrough Evening Gazette announcing that appearing ‘live’ at the Summer Shows with BBC Radio Cleveland’s Super Summer Extravaganza were none other than chart-toppers Black Lace.

The first few shows went fantastically well. The jocks over on the commercial radio station stage may have had their give-away Sony Walkmans, a year’s supply of TDK tapes and a free meal for two at Middlesbrough’s premier Parmo restaurant, Fatso’s (I kid you not), but we wiped the floor with them.

Side note: For those not privy to the delights of Middlesbrough’s finest food offering, a Parmo involved an escalope of pork covered in bechamel sauce and topped with melted cheese - with chips. It was a heart attack in the making.

Back to The Summer Shows and to recap: the team at the commercial station, TFM, may have had all the give-aways but BBC Radio Cleveland had Black Lace appearing live on the pull down stage of a dual axel caravan with stickers on the side and a speaker system loud enough to disrupt air traffic. They dazzled Darlington, scintillated South Bank and rocked Redcar. Opening the show with Agadoo, their 1984 barnstorming number two in the pop charts hit (30 weeks in the top 75!). Ever keen to give the public what they want, they even closed with the same song. A cynic might suggest they had very little other material to play but that would be doing them a disservice. After all, there was their latest belter - “I Am The Music Man” along with the classics: “Do the Conga”, “El Vino Collapso” and, of course, there was “Gangbang” - complete with a wholly inappropriate dance number that everyone watching was invited to participate in.

The two members of Black Lace - Dene and Colin - were contracted to play two twenty minute slots at each show. They were brilliant. They turned up on time, they pretended to play guitar really well while the backing tapes played out and they sang, beautifully in tune, over the top. After they finished they’d sign a few autographs, chat to their fans, help me lug the speakers back to the Transit van and then drive off to wherever they were playing that night. Our competitors looked on with jealousy, their DJs growling like caged dogs. We’d beaten them at their own game and, in accordance with the terms of the BBC’s Investing In Live Music award, we were helping live music (cough….).

Whenever a band signs a contract, they have what is known as a rider. This is the contracted refreshment that I, as producer, have to produce for the band. Van Halen, for instance, demanded a bowl of M&Ms with all the brown ones taken out. Guns N’ Roses requested - and were granted - 400 cigarettes and a selection of adult magazines. For the avoidance of doubt neither Van Halen nor Guns N’Roses ever played the Radio Cleveland Summer Shows. Black Lace, on the other hand, did. Dene and Colin asked for some cheese and chutney sandwiches and sixteen cans of lager. They never got anywhere near drinking them all but that was the rider and that was what I had to provide for them.

At the show in Redcar, on a piece of grassland in the shadow of the steelworks, everything was going smoothly. Black Lace had arrived, the caravan’s stage had been set and the speaker rig was kicking out tunes.

The songs were going well. Even “Gangbang” was a delight. Well, sort of. They came off stage to the wild applause and cheers of the thirty to forty people watching. The encore was next. Colin Gibb, as well as singing and owning the best hair in Black Lace, also played guitar - a Fender Strat. He grabbed a towel, dried himself off, picked up a half full can of beer, took a swig and then fell over unconscious. I thought it was part of his routine but something else had been having a drink from his can.

“Oh God,” said Dene, his face as white as his jumpsuit. “Pull his trousers down.”

I was pretty damned sure this wasn’t part of the rider.

I looked at Colin. His lips were swelling up.

“He’s been stung - it’s a wasp.. in the beer,” said Dene.

He rummaged through Colin’s bag and pulled out an EpiPen and stabbed him in the leg. Almost immediately colour started to flood back into Colin’s skin. It was a full-on, bona fide medical miracle. Almost.

“He’ll be right. Just prop him up over there and he’ll be ok in a bit,” Dene said. “But - the encore - we need to finish the show.”

What a bloody pro.

Now, I’m a man with simple dreams. I’m fairly happy with my lot in life but I always regret not chasing one of my dreams. I said it at the beginning and I’ll say it again: I’d always wanted to be a Rock God and this was my chance.

“Nick. Get Colin’s guitar. You know the words.”

And so, for a brief three minutes and nine seconds I played out my dream. Sort of. Admittedly, in my own private fantasy I’m Bernard Edwards standing centre stage with Nile Rodgers and we’re both playing Good Times … but Black Lace was enough for me. I ran onto the rather small stage, pretended to play guitar and sang a pale imitation of Colin’s harmonies to Agadoo. I pushed pineapple and ground coffee like the best of them and then, after the song finished, Dene explained to the crowd that I was a guest member for the day and I took a bow. A couple of kids clapped as I walked up to the mic and exclaimed at the top of my voice:

“Thank You Redcar. You’ve been amazing!” but by that time, Adam who was looking after the PA system had killed the mic. And my dreams.

Post Script. A couple of years ago.

For the last few years, in my spare time, I’ve been starting to write down stories like this one. Time plays tricks on your memory so I needed to check a few facts with Black Lace. Thanks to Facebook it only took a couple of clicks to find Dene’s profile. But I had a hell of a shock. He’d been really unwell. I sent him a message and despite it being more than 30 years since I’d last seen him, a few minutes later the phone rang.

“What happened?” I asked.

“I woke up the other morning with really bad pains, phoned the ambulance and they were great, took me into hospital and I spent two days there.”

I was speaking to Dene after he’d been rushed into hospital. Thankfully he was on the mend.

We talked about the summer shows and Dene remembered them - or maybe he was just being as lovely as ever and said he remembered them.

“It’s one of my opening gambits,” I told him. “I’ve used it as quite a successful chat up line, you know. ‘I was once in Black Lace for the afternoon!”

“That’s not strictly accur…” he tried to say before I changed the topic.

“So, apart from this latest scare, how are things?”

I got the impression Dene was now wondering why he’d bothered to phone me. I can’t blame him. We talked about the Redcar gig.

“Colin always had a thing about wasps,” he said.

“Lucky for me!” I told him.

As it was a phone call, I couldn’t see Dene’s face but I’m pretty sure he took the phone away from his ear and stared at it as if he was talking to someone slightly deranged.

“Anyway, Nick. You’ve got my number if you need anything else,” he said.

“And, Dene, you’ve got mine if you ever need to call on me again”

“Er…. yes. That’s right. I have”

I’m still waiting.

Colin (1953-2024)

and Dene (still shaking pineapples)