Whispers was walking down a quiet West London Avenue near Abbey Road looking for Paul McCartney and quietly minding its own business, when who should screech past in a metallic blue R registration Renault 5 but young Mark O’Toole of Frankie fame.
“Wayo,” O’Toole yelled, blaring out on his hooter so loud that Whispers nearly jumped out of its skin. “I’m off for a driving lesson”. Aah, and what’s yours called, replied a badly ruffled Whispers. “The name’s far too rude.”
Mark stopped for a chat and a chew on the Montreaux inquest. He admitted that: “We did have a pretty good cup final afternoon and things got a tiny bit out of hand. There was a bit of damage caused but not what the gutter press said. They were annoyed ‘cos we were ordering crates of lager and not giving them any. Nash may have dropped a bottle by mistake and a window did get broken but nothing out of the ordinary.” Indeed Whispers well remembers the previous year’s shenanigans at Montreaux when Frankie and Duran Duran threatened to remove a mini bar from the wall and lob it into the swimming pool unless they were plied with laughing lemonade.
Frankie record plants are a changing. After deciding to make ‘Warriors’ the single, it now appears that ‘Rage Hard’ is favourite.
“Both are the usual Frankie stuff,” according to Mark. “Like Holly says, they’re songs for the working man but much more hard rock than our other stuff. There are guitar hero axe breaks and all the expected lads touches.”
While a cloak of secrecy was thrown over the Frankie LP it transpires that Midge Ure and an unknown limo driver in Los Angles have both heard the demos.
“God knows how Midge had ‘em but he played them to the same driver we had. There must be an infiltrator in the camp. The LP will be out in September and a tour is nearly finalised “if we can get the venues. They’re all full of car shows and gardening exhibitios.”
Part of the problem is that the Pet Shop Boys are also embarking on their tour in September, as are Spandau Ballet, and there aren’t enough stadia to go round. When they do play expect new songs including ‘Watching The Wild Life’ and a moody little number about Mrs Thatcher.
Just before Mark roared off yelling “me driving test is the same week as the single!” he did let slip that “we were supposed to have insulted Queen, Noel Edmonds and A-Ha at Montreaux but we didn’t. We didn’t see ‘em. If we had done then we would have insulted ‘em. Beep! Beep!”…