I had also seen an Aston Villa ‘XI’ take on Oxford United at the Kassam Stadium in a friendly in the summer of 2009, but as the side that night was basically our youth team, I’m not sure it counts.

There were four of us going to the game, and a travel plan was hatched thus – I would travel to Bristol with Sam in the car, whilst James and Luke, keen to get themselves properly fed and watered before the game, would take the train to Bristol instead and arrive in the city a couple of hours before us. We had tickets for the Uplands Terrace, a section of which was reserved especially for the away supporters – but as our gang included two Aston Villa fans, one Bristol Rovers fan and a neutral, and we had the intention of staying together, the main Rovers part of the terracing it was. I would have to keep my celebrations to a minimum when (if) we scored. Earlier in the week, James, my Aston Villa oppo, had said that he thought we were the underdogs in this game – slightly extreme, perhaps, but enough to make me worry slightly that I could be present at the upset of the round, should things go wrong. Luckily, that happened up the road at Swindon instead.

I met Sam at the Texaco garage at the back of my house at twenty five minutes past three (a rule of thumb when going anywhere with Sam Perry – always add ten minutes on to any time he might tell you he will meet you) and, after a quick visit to the pumps, during which Sam, much to his embarrassment, was informed by a helpful lady in the queue in a very loud voice that he had left his filler cap open, we were away.

Conscious though that we were missing a vital relegation six pointer for Corsham at the Southfields ground in Radstock, I made several phone calls to our secretary Rich Taylor during the journey, but all to no avail. It would appear that we were being blanked for missing such an important match. In the end, we finally got a score out of Sam’s uncle Chris – Corsham would lose the game 1-0 through a goal scored in the first twenty seconds of the first half.

After admirably fighting our way Sam and I managed to find a parking spot in a side street about ten minutes walk away from the ground, and after a pause in the car to listen to Macclesfield take the lead in their cup tie against Bolton, we found ourselves following a group of men all the way to the game. One of whom was casually supping on a can of Special Brew. Now, I don’t know about you, but I have never seen a can of Special Brew being consumed anywhere other than outdoors. I’ve also been told that it’s like drinking treacle that tastes of vodka. However, as if to prove that Special Brew doesn’t necessarily mean you should judge a man by his cover, after he had finished his drink, he placed the empty can carefully in a recycling box that had been left outside a house that we passed. Anyway, I digress.

We arrived at the ground just in time to witness a minor scuffle break out between two Rovers fans queuing to get in. We had agreed to meet outside the turnstiles in order to distribute the tickets, and a quick phone call to James informed me that they were just getting into a taxi and that they would be with us in fifteen minutes. We passed the time by taking a quick look at the match day programme, and I was excited to discover that Howard Webb would be taking charge of the game. It meant at least that I would get to see a World Cup finalist in action this evening.

Half an hour later, our friends had still not made it to the ground, and another phone call uncovered the fact that they had in fact been stuck in traffic for the last twenty five minutes. With kick off only a matter of minutes away, Sam decided enough was enough, took his ticket and made his way into the ground, leaving me outside to meet them. He needn’t have bothered, as a few seconds later, I spotted my friends and we joined the throngs of late comers rushing to get in before the first whistle sounded.

As a consequence of this unfortunate hold up, by the time we managed to get into the ground itself, the Uplands Terrace, which was all on one level of footing, had filled to capacity and we were forced to stand around five rows from the front, which, as you can imagine, did not guarantee the best view. James and Luke decided to go and chance their arm elsewhere, while Sam and I stayed put. Indeed, things were so bad at the start of the game view-wise that I decided to visit the deserted pasty stand instead of trying to watch the action (three pounds well spent ) and text my girlfriend Rachel instead, whilst trying to follow what was going on at a football match I was actually at by checking the Aston Villa Twitter feed instead. The two wanderers soon returned, not having managed to find a better vantage point, and we struggled on for the rest of the half. We did, however, manage to stand on tiptoes just long enough to witness Marc Albrighton slot the ball through the legs of on-loan Rovers keeper Michael Poke after picking up a sumptuous through ball from Stan Petrov to make the score 1-0 to the Villa.

As the venerable Mr Webb sounded the half time whistle, we prepared ourselves for the inevitable rush of the Rovers fans leaving their spots on the terrace in order to go to the toilet, or get a pasty, or a beer, etc. As Rachel had advised me in a text whilst the first half was in progress, ‘Maybe if people go pee etc at half time you’ll be able to move forward a bit?’ Sound advice if ever I’d seen it. Except that, nobody went to pee. Or get a pasty. Or, indeed, go to pee and then get a pasty. Everyone stayed exactly where they were – they weren’t going to give up these spots easily, oh no! This led to another parting of the ways, and again Sam and I stuck together while James and Luke went off to try their luck in another part of the ground, with the promise to text me if they found a good spot. However, within minutes Sam and I managed to do just that ourselves – a matter of yards to our left stood the wheelchair enclosure, behind which nobody appeared to be standing. We moved ourselves to this spot and were afforded a great view of the pitch – better still than James and Luke, who we later found out were two rows from the front on the terracing below us and weren’t having much more luck there.

The second half started, and Sam and I quickly found ourselves surrounded by others who had had the same great idea as us. By now I had slipped easily into the charade of pretending to be a Rovers fan, applauding their substitutions and tutting at misplaced passes, whilst secretly wishing that the Villa would hurry up and score again to make the game a bit safer. For most of the period, standing behind me but a little off to the left  was a lady in her mid forties who would choose the strangest moments to shout ‘COME ON YOU GAS’ directly into my left ear. With her was her father, who continually muttered ‘for fuck’s sake’ under his breath for the entire time he was standing within my earshot. This peculiar case of football Tourette’s increased once Gabby Agbonlahor, on for the ineffective Emile Heskey at half time, dispossessed the Pirate’s Cian Bolger (later voted man of the match, much to Sam’s disgust) in midfield and curved a shot home from the edge of the area for 2-0. Not once did I hear him offer a word of encouragement to his team – indeed, as the home team’s Eliot Richards came off to be replaced by Lee Brown with ten minutes to go, the gentleman turned to Sam (perhaps he had sensed that I was a Villa fan in disguise) and, talking across me, began to berate the withdrawn player for shaking hands with Villa left back Stephen Warnock as he left the pitch. Once Ciaran Clark had danced through the Rovers defence from midway inside their half and slotted Villa’s third goal past Poke, they decided enough was enough and headed for the exit.

However, they managed to miss a grandstand finish, with the veteran McGleish pouncing on a mistake by Dunne, who had been rock solid all evening, and chipping the ball exquisitely over the onrushing Villa goalkeeper Brad Guzan, currently enjoying a run in the side due to Shay Given’s ongoing injury problems. There was more to come, as three minutes of stoppage time was announced, Warnock handballed a cross in the area and Mr Webb had no hesitation in pointing to the spot. McGleish stepped up once again, but his poor penalty was easily saved by Guzan, and the Rovers comeback was over.

3-1 the final score was then, and a satisfying result. The best was yet to come, however, when on the way back to the car I saw a small boy with his father, walking in the opposite direction to us, wearing a home made Bristol Rovers hat – which was made out of an upturned large brown envelope with a picture of the club’s crest stuck to it with Sellotape. It was something I would have done as a child if I had been able to go to games regularly, and it made me smile on the inside. Making me smile on the outside though was reading out Sky Sports’ report on the match to Sam on the way home – Villa make ‘light work’ of Rovers and ‘stroll’ past them into the fourth round, or words to that effect. It could possibly be another fifteen years before I see another Aston Villa game, so I was happy with that.

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Mr Richards, deputy head of the school, devout creationist Christian, and also the most fearsome man to ever grace the site, had probably come into the school that night expecting to hear the usual efforts from the choir, the hand chime group, the wind band, et cetera. So, when he saw these three scruffy year tens in awful football shirts hanging around in the canteen next to the hall with some guitars, he probably thought it best to investigate. “So lads, what are you going to be playing tonight then? A bit of the Bee Gees perhaps?” he asked me. “Erm…not exactly, no…” I spluttered out. I could feel the pressure rising in the room. You really could have cut the atmosphere with a cricket stump. “We’re going to be doing a couple of songs by the Rolling Stones, actually…” I stopped. He stopped. Everything stopped. I watched as his face dropped the furthest length I have ever seen a face drop. And, eventually, after what seemed like about four hours, he finally replied. “The Rolling Stones, eh? Spawn of the devil.” And with that, he turned on his heel and left. To this day, I am unsure if that remark was directed at the Stones, or at us. I’d like to think us.

The first ever proper Sweeter Than Brazil gig was all over in about seven and a half minutes. I say first proper gig, because that afternoon we had played in a sixth form assembly at the behest of our geography teacher at the time, Eddie “The Simulator” Sims. We ended up opening for a band called the Moomins, the leader of which would go on to have a massive impact on our band in the months that followed. But more about that later. We opened by firing out “Sympathy For The Devil”, which was the first song we ever learnt after my father had kick started my musical education by shoving a copy of “Forty Licks” into my hands one day and saying “Listen and learn, son. This is what real music is.”. We followed that, as all good bands do, by introducing ourselves to the audience, and finished with a ropey take on “Honky Tonk Women”. So, Mr Richards was right to be concerned, as we had just opened a Christmas concert by performing one song about Satan, and then another about prostitution. But I didn’t care, because we were Sweeter Than Brazil, and we were the dog’s bollocks.

We were by far the best act on that night (in my deluded little fantasy world mind anyway), and I told anyone that would listen, including the lady behind the counter at Turners Fast Foods, which was where I went immediately afterwards for a celebratory small portion of chips. I had played my brand new Gibson SG copy, which I had got for my birthday just days before, and I thought was the best thing in the world.

No matter how brilliant we thought we were, though (in our deluded little fantasy world minds), we all knew in our hearts that two guitars and one bass wasn’t enough. If we were going to go on and become world beaters. we needed to expand. However, instead of gaining numbers like we needed to do, we went down to just two, when Max decided to go back to another band in our year group at the time, Small Gods, that had been formed and he was playing with before Sweeter Than Brazil came to be. Unfortunately, my memory of the days that followed and our attempts to recruit new band members are relatively hazy. Well, give me a break, I’ve been doing well up to this point. Suffice it to say, I am unsure if it was me or Phil that asked Sam McCready, lead guitarist and singer from The Moomins, who we had played with in that sixth form assembly, to join the band, although I would like to take credit for this. We were delighted when he accepted, and he was also able to bring his mate Joe Cannings along to play bass in Max’s absence.

This I can remember clearly though – walking back from meeting Sam and Joe that afternoon, Phil and I once again turned to pondering where we were going to get a drummer from. Just as we were thinking out loud about the matter, I heard a quiet voice behind me clear his throat and begin to speak. “Erm…I play the drums.” I turned around, and down slightly, to find myself looking at a year seven student with bad highlights in his hair. I knew him from going to Corsham Town’s home matches with my dad. His name was Tom Page, and he’d happened to be playing football in the playground just as we were walking through. “OK, you’re in.” I said without too much hesitation. I figured he might be one of the only drummers in the school, let alone an available one. Happily, it turned out that he was quite good at it, so we kept him. Soon, the five of us were meeting up regularly in the clubhouse at Corsham Town to rehearse and add to our setlist. “Smoke On The Water” by Deep Purple and “Not Fade Away”, again by the Stones, were two early additions, amongst others. We played in assemblys for other year groups, memorably including one occasion where Sam liberated a box of percussion instruments from the music room and led around fifteen other students in providing the “rhythm accompaniment” for us. We were also lucky enough to play in an assembly for our own year, which the aforementioned Mr Richards was also due to speak in when we had concluded our performance. Needless to say, we kept “Sympathy For The Devil” going for a full eight minutes before they had to practically cut the power to get us off.

After a few of these performances, we graduated to playing short sets following Corsham Town home games, which we did about two or three times. We also went back to school to perform at the 2004 summer concert, which has the distinction of being the first ever show we did that was recorded. I now only have a copy of one of the songs we performed that night, naturally “Sympathy” once again.

With Joe deciding to move on not long after this show, we recruited our friend and fellow year eleven Rob Price to play bass, and, much to our surprise, started to begin to get hired for higher profile shows. We played at a cousin of mine’s wedding, for which we charged the princely sum of £80. We played at the Whitley Golf Club captain’s ball, for which we subtly changed the lyrics to Electric Six’s “Gay Bar” to fit in with the occasion (You/I want to take you to a golf club…) . We even managed to win the 2005 Corsham School Battle Of The Bands, despite my guitar giving up and dying like the dog it was halfway through the second of our three songs. We won by a handful of votes, and, as Sam cranked out what my father still refers to as the best live guitar solo he has ever heard during a song called “Blue On Black”, I realised we were really getting somewhere. This was something that I wanted to be doing for a long time to come.

With our narrow victory fresh in the mind, and by this time having started sixth form myself, I organised a show at Corsham Town FC for late September 2005, tentatively called “Southbank Feel The Noize”. Just over ninety people showed up (we charged £2 on the door, oh yes, no opportunities missed around here, brother) and we lifted the roof off the place. My friend Josh Coombs recorded the whole show, which I still listen to on occasion today, and I’ve got to say, I was absolute rubbish. But again, I didn’t care. Because I was Stu Joslin. I was in Sweeter Than Brazil. And Sweeter Than Brazil were the dog’s bollocks. In my deluded little fantasy world mind.

Sadly though, this was to be Sam’s last show with the band before he departed for university, and, after one more show at school opening up for Ballroom Disaster in January 2006, with interest dwindling, Sweeter Than Brazil was no more. However, all was not lost as I was still in a band, sort of, that wasn’t doing much at the moment. Nearly a year earlier, in May 2005, our head of year, Mr Evans, had asked us if we could make up a band and play a couple of songs at our year eleven leavers assembly later on that month. I often wonder what course the next four years of my life might have taken if he had never asked us that question…

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Cheers.

Saturday 24th December
Morecambe & Wise’s Classic Christmas Moments – 8pm, BBC 2
Father Ted Night – from 9pm, More 4
Top Of The Pops 2 Christmas Special, 10.25pm, BBC 2

Sunday 25th December
Morecambe & Wise 1971 Christmas Special – 11.40am, BBC 1

Monday 26th December
The Unforgettable Ernie Wise – 7pm, ITV 1

Wednesday 28th December
Top Gear Christmas Special – 8pm, BBC 2
The Untold Tommy Cooper – 9pm, Channel 4

Yes, that’s a lot of Morecambe and Wise and Tommy Cooper. If you have no idea who I’m talking about, or just think I’m a sad bastard, I hope these clips change your mind.

…and this poor remake of the same sketch with Jill Gascoine in their Christmas show for Thames ten years later in 1980.

Doesn’t stand up, does it?

Anyway, as much as I’d like it to be, the point of this post isn’t just to show you clips of Morecambe and Wise sketches. There will be more of that later. What I’m trying to say is – recycling your old material can never work out that well.

However, I’m going to break my own rule, just this once. Previously only available on Facebook, here is the first part of a kind of ‘band history’ of Corinthian Casuals that I started writing a couple of years ago. I came across it again recently, and I rather liked it, so I decided to put it up here for your delectation. I’ll post the second part tomorrow, and, if you’re lucky, I might just finish it one day.

My dad burst into the bathroom, eyes wide with excitement. A peculiar exercise at the best of times, but, seeing as I was actually in the bath at the time, even more confusing in this instance. However, his actions were soon all but justified.
“Stu, I’ve just got off the phone to a place called the Greyhound in Amesbury. They want you to play next month, and they’re going to give you £150!”

The journey to this point had begun for me personally in the winter of 2002, when my friend Craig Mackrell decided to buy a bass guitar. Naturally, because he was the only person I knew who played an instrument that wasn’t an electric guitar, we immediately formed a band, which we bravely called Prozac Coalition. That’s brave for two reasons. One, nobody knew what it meant (and, to this day, I still don’t know what we were trying to achieve), and two, it was crap.
Being the best friends that we were, we spent much of the following six months visiting each other’s houses and working out little pieces, both covers and originals. This definitely made a change from our preferred activity of making up unbeatable teams on the data editor in Champ Man 01/02. Somewhere in the depths of my bedroom cupboard there will still be a dusty old C90, recorded in my front room on the karaoke machine I got for Christmas when I was nine, of us trying out a guitar and bass only version of “More Life In A Tramp’s Vest” by our idols, Stereophonics. Similarly, I’m sure that somewhere in Craig’s possession lies the notebook in which we sketched out our song ideas, most notably the retrospectively horrifying “Pump That Hat”, which, rather predictably, only had one vocal line in it. Sadly for me, my songwriting hasn’t really come along that much in the seven years that have since passed.
Eventually, we got wind that another friend of ours, Lloyd Davies, was taking up the drums, and he was added to the line up. Unfortunately though, this was just about the last thing that we did under the Prozac Coalition name, as, despite rumours of an eponymous debut album sweeping the school, and Craig and I creating one hell of a website for the band one Sunday afternoon (http://web.archive.org/web/20031219104402/http://prozaccoalition.netfirms.com/), we just kind of stopped.
And we probably just went back to making up unbeatable teams on the data editor in Champ Man 01/02.

Fast forward now to late 2003. I’m in year ten, and I’m in T3, my tutorial room. My friend Phil Greenland has popped over from the drama studio, his tutor base, for some reason, and we’re shooting the breeze until the bell rings for the next lesson. Suddenly, during the course of the idle conversation, he produces a bright orange piece of paper from his rucksack.
“Hey Stu, did you see they’re asking for acts for the Christmas concert in a couple of weeks?”
“No.”
“Do you fancy doing it?”
“OK.”
Phil and I had now been playing guitar for some time, and regularly got together to practise and swap ideas. By this time, another friend of ours, Max Goff, had begun to play the bass, and, after a few run throughs together in the music room after lessons had ended, we felt confident enough to put ourselves forward to appear in the Corsham School Christmas Concert 2003 ©.
We duly went to see Mr Day the music teacher, who immediately informed us that we would be opening the show. No pressure on the young lads there then. As I remember it, the ensuing exchange happened something like this:
“OK, so it’s Stuart Joslin, Philip Greenland and Max Goff then – and do you have a name for the band at all?”
“Erm, yes…we’re called “Sweeter Than Brazil”.”
“Sorry…Sweeter Than what?”
We were buzzing like Furbies with dodgy batteries, and, a few days before the show, decided it would be a good idea if we got hold of some matching football shirts for us to wear on the night. Luckily, my father was, at the time, part of the back room staff at our local team, Corsham Town, and he obligingly obtained three shirts for us.
And so it was, that on the night of 12th December 2003, two days after my fifteenth birthday, me and my mates Phil and Max strode confidently on to the stage in S Block Hall in front of three hundred odd people, each wearing bright red, cerise-pattered nylon football shirts with “HONG KONG HOUSE” emblazoned across the front in inch high letters, and proceeded to begin a Christmas concert with probably the two most inappropriate songs for the occasion that we could find…