I begin life full of expectations as an Assistant Plumber, ‘filled with dream and hope’ as man once said. I am going to ‘plumb the world’.

In the late nineteen fifties I am discovered by the bartender in a small, run-down pub in Bristol with one letter missing called ‘The Bunch of  rapes’. Unfortunately, I am no longer assistant plumbing, but licking out ashtrays due to chronic malnutrition. Anyhow, that bartender thinks I am very funny and flushed with success I set out on the ill thought-up ‘Licking Ashtrays tour’ of 1958, finally giving up in February of that year due to a serious illness.