10. milking the name
So here's every second-year student at Oxford, bored out of our enormous minds. So what do we do? In a single-sex college system, sometimes you have to make your own entertainment.
One of the guys in our french class organised a play - purely to meet women. One in particular, the leading actress. She wasn't interested in him, though maybe the play was alright.
I wasn't about to do anything of that sort. Too much like hard work. But one day I'm passing the time in Steve's room as usual, and he mentions something that happened at the school he was in, down in Bognor.
Every friday or whenever it was, the headmaster would read out notices in assembly. One of these was about the model railway club, which met at such and such a time under the direction of a pupil called JM Tailby.
It's a name I never forgot. Because JM Tailby didn't exist! Nor did the model railway society.
Now, this begs a question. Apparently the headmaster read out the notice as if he thought it was kosher. But even in a big comprehensive, a head teacher surely knows the names of every pupil. So either he was in on it, or he knew the joke was against him and went along with it to make the perpetrators think they'd got one over on him. You like kids to feel good about themselves.
Anyway, I'm listening to this tale - bored with student life, remember - and I start thinking that a con like that might he fun to organise - but on a more ambitious scale. As I riff on the idea, Steve agrees it could be a good one and we start planning the details. We really did have too much free time.
*
A university Rag Week raises cash for charity. Not that students need an excuse to do something silly. Like a practical joke.
This may be apocryphal, but the story goes that a group of Cambridge students dressed up as workmen. Donkey jackets and pickaxes. They dug a hole in the road on Piccadilly, then went home, leaving their screens behind them. And the hole.
That's it. That was the entire joke. Dig a hole in a major London street, then piss off. Let's be generous and say they made money for charity by winning a bet, because otherwise it was just destructive and shit.
But it did lead to something smarter. A follow-on gag that required no physical labour at all.
Again, this may not be gospel. It's said that an Oxford undergraduate was looking out of his window one day (probably as bored as the rest of us), watching a gang of workmen digging a hole in a road...
With nothing better to think about, he left his room, went outside, found a phonebox, and called the police.
There's a group of students digging up a part of St Giles.
No need to say any more. Remembering the Piccadilly affair, the police sent a van full of officers.
Meanwhile our student saunters over to the workmen, who happen to be irish. Thought I'd better warn you, he says. There's a group of students dressed as policemen. They're going to put you in a van and dump you somewhere out of town. It's for Rag Week.
Then he returned to his room and sat back to enjoy the pitched battle. You have to hope it's true.
In 1975-76, the con I had in mind couldn't match that - but it kept us occupied for longer, so it was worth it at the time. And it led to the name of a band.
*
We decided to invite a lot of people to a place where nothing was happening, then watch their reactions when they realised they'd been had. Like taking those irish navvies into the Oxfordshire countryside and leaving them there.
That was the sum total of our ambition. No more imaginative than digging up Piccadilly, though at least we left the infrastructure intact.
We sent a letter to people in our situation. Every second-year modern languages student in Oxford. We could've sent one to all three years, but that would've meant several hundred, so we kept it to a manageable number.
To convince that many people, what bait do you use? Well, anything you fucking like. To relieve the tedium of college life, they'll turn up to watch two flies crawling up a window. But I have to say our invite would've enticed even those who weren't that desperate. I put myself in people's positions and worked out what I might like.
They were being called to a meeting, at our college, to hear details about a trip abroad. That's enough in itself. But then you say the trip is a weekend in Paris, and ears really prick up.
I threw in a couple of things relevant to the course - a fictitious new play by Anouilh, a non-existent exhibition of german expressionist painting - but that was just to make it sound authentic. Even the swots weren't going to give a toss about that. What they were drawn to was Paris and the weekend being free - though even that wasn't the clincher.
Imagine it. You're a sex-starved male undergraduate in a room with a single bed. You haven't spoken to a woman all term. And this letter suddenly appears in your pigeonhole. Not just the attractions of Paris but the attractions of Paris with members of the opposite sex. Your language class will be going with the same set from a women's college.
Your eyes bulge. You read the letter twice. Your pulse rate goes up while a grin spreads across your face.
Fuck Anouilh and Franz Marc, put me on a plane with the ladies of Somerville or St Hugh's. Female students receiving the letter were told they'd be going with a male college.
What a godsend, they're all thinking. Almost too good to be true.
*
How were we going to send out invites to two hundred people? We didn't have access to the college photocopier, and we weren't going to pay a print shop. A joke this puerile wasn't worth real money.
That's where Bernie came in.
As I say, he was working at Blackwell's the publishers. And he was working nights. Very handy.
In the small hours, he could be seen lowering a wire with a small noose on the end. This worked its way down through a gap in the ceiling of his boss's office and lassoed a bottle of Johnny Walker Black Label, as slick as anything in Mission Impossible.
When he wasn't doing that, or the day job of operating the firm's computer, he was xeroxing copies of the invites I'd written. Blackwell's provided the two hundred envelopes too. At our end, no problem finding a list of every languages student across the colleges.
Oxford University had an internal postal system. You just wrote someone's name and college and left the envelope in a particular pigeonhole in your own lodge. Then someone working for the college would take it across town for you. Saved you spending money on stamps. Without this arrangement, I wouldn't have got together with the blonde in my first year.
We made full use of it this time, taking care not to fill the pigeonhole with too many letters every time, in case someone began to wonder.
We let a few people in on the con. The rest of the Worcester language set. And they were as enthusiastic as us, being just as bored and silly. One of them even loaded a satchel with some of the letters and cycled off to deliver them personally. Completely unnecessary and a bit odd - till we discovered his motive.
This was the same guy who'd organised the play above. He once told us he was the most talented student in our class! Knowing this didn't exactly endear him, he volunteered to deliver some of the letters - so he could open one. He suspected we might be sending all two hundred students to his room! Now why didn't we think of that...?
No, we told everyone to meet at the porter's lodge, just inside the main entrance. The great con was going to take place at our own gaff.
The letter sent to the women's colleges was simple. The Paris trip would be just them and guys from Worcester. But for male students, the vast majority, it wouldn't make sense to go to Worcester to discuss a weekend with girls; they'd expect to be invited to a female college.
Easily fixed. The male students were told two female colleges would be going, and two male, one of them Worcester.
With everything in place, we found a high vantage point and waited.
*
When you come into Worcester College, you go through the lodge onto an outdoor stone corridor running across you. You look through a line of columns at the quad straight ahead. This is mostly a square of grass, with a row of medieval buildings on the left and taller ones on the right, both with archways leading to tutors' rooms and student accommodation. In his first year, Martin Neubert was allocated one of the posh rooms on the right while I wasn't even in college. Told you he dressed better. His place was right at the top of the building. He introduced me to ginièvre up there, in a stone bottle, reminded me of grappa. I hate them both, but the evenings were mellow.
As I say, in the second year we both had rooms in the modern blocks beyond the quad. But someone else in the language set must've had a room in the tall buildings where Martin started off - because that's where we stationed ourselves to watch the con unfold.
Several of us are looking out of the windows. Me and Steve, Bernie and Martin, a couple of other guys from the french class, Harry maybe. From up here, the entrance porch is down on the left. At around the time mentioned in the invitation, students start appearing around the colonnade.
To cut it short, the great con worked. We must've attracted almost everyone we wrote to - because the place was swamped. Hundreds milling around in confusion. I can only imagine how many times the porters must've explained that no there was no meeting scheduled, show me that letter again. At one point, as people kept pouring in, Blond Steve banged on the window with glee. A few faces looked up, so we stepped back hastily. Don't do that again: if anyone comes up here, there's no escape.
After enjoying the scene for a while, we decide it might be a good wheeze to mingle with the throng of victims. So we wander down and try to appear as bewildered as anyone. Just as well I did some acting at school.
What the fuck's going on? Who are all these maniacs?
We've been invited. A trip to Paris.
A what? No-one told us.
Suddenly someone says they know who's behind it, and Steve and I try to look even more innocent. The culprit's Spotty Eddie from Magdalen, they're going round there right away. They meant Eddie Knox, who didn't have any spots at all. Mate of Harry's; years later, we all played cricket in the rain.
The novelty's wearing off by the time Steve spots someone he went to school with. And I really should've given him acting lessons - because this guy sees the look on Steve's face and points at him.
It was you! You bastard! I know it was.
He chases us round the corner, then stops and laughs. No need to explain why we perpetrated such a pointless scheme - and my letter came in for some praise. Who's the name at the bottom of it?
*
From 1974 to 1979, Oxford United had a goalkeeper who'd started out with Portsmouth. Blond Steve followed football on the south coast, so he knew about him. When this goalkeeper left Oxford, he moved back down there to play for Waterlooville, not far from Steve's home town Bognor.
The goalkeeper's name was John Milkins.
With apologies to the man himself and anyone else with that surname, it sounded a bit weedy to us, a mild-mannered minor functionary somewhere. Wilkins is weak enough, but adding milk made it even wetter. James Bond and Ethan Hunt were never going to be Willie Milkins. And the name Les is less rock 'n roll than John. A naff way of thinking, but we all do it. My surname has had its share.
So we had something to add to the foot of our invite. The signature of the social secretary of the Worcester College something-or-other society: Les Milkins.
*
The big con gave us the taste for more, but only a miniature version and just the one. A letter from Somerville to a men's college, inviting them to play a football match, followed by drinks, a disco, and 'other things'. Steve and I went round to that male college to see the letter pinned on their noticeboard, with an added note: 'Sounds like they really mean it, chaps.' Places in the squad were snapped up almost immediately. Same level of enthusiasm at Somerville. Both invites were signed by a Milkins: Les and Lesley.
We stopped after that. Don't want to risk being childish, do you. But the name took hold. A line appeared in one of the student papers: 'Who is Les Milkins?'
When it came to a name for the band, he was a unanimous choice.
*
I say band. We all say band. But just before that, in the 1960s, rock bands were pop groups. Francis Rossi: 'We got our first record contract in 1966. We were a group then. That's the word they used. Rory Gallagher started that 'band' thing.'
If that's true, it happened very early: Brian Jones was using the word 'band' in a TV interview around 1964. But throughout that decade, we thought of them as groups.
When Lee Brilleaux died, an obit called him a bandleader. Same with Shane McGowan, of all people. That's plain wrong. That's a big band or a pop orchestra. Group is still the right word, fifty years after it was superseded.
*
There used to be a rock group called the Sensational Alex Harvey Band.
Maybe they were being ironic - because they weren't much cop at all. Quite good live apparently, but then pub bands sometimes are. They picked the name to draw attention to themselves. Same reason they brought out an annoying camp version of Delilah.
Still, we used their template. Once you decide you want Les Milkins in the name, you can't leave it at that. The Les Milkins Band: yawn. We needed an adjective.
We couldn't nick Sensational, even as a joke. And I said we might as well tell it as it is. The not very good at all Les Milkins Band. A bit rubbish really. Except it had to be worse, so people would notice. Lousy. Appalling. Atrocious. The Atrocious Les Milkins Band. If we sounded any better than that, people might think we weren't too bad. The Psychological Trick Band
And the others all agreed. The name was memorable, showed we didn't take ourselves too seriously, and had a ring of truth! I was still struggling with Johnny B Goode, never mind any other tracks.