Fear and loathing in South Molton Street
The Maker can’t move these days without some fracas bursting out around our ears. Pop out for a jug of Bovril at lunch-time and within seconds the place is in uproar as a pitched battle starts between mods and rockers or some other similar ethnic minority. And so it was that our shy, retiring little TTT smudge Maurice Conroy chanced upon Paul Rutherford, Mark O’Toole and Ped Gill of Frankie in a fashionable South Moulton Street dresserie (Yamamoto to be precise). Naturally enough, being a pro and all that, Maurice dug out the old clicker and started firing from the hip as Frankie bought up half the store. As they emerged from the store there was an unsightly ruck with Our Boy Wonder in the middle of it.
Rutherford and O’Toole charged towards Conroy demanding the film. “I’ve fookin’ ‘ad enough of yoo,” yelled Rutherford menacingly.
Conroy: “Don’t you touch me, get your hands off my camera.”
Rutherford: “We WANT that film.”
Conroy: “You can’t have it. You got no right to touch me. Do it again and I’ll sue you.” (Maurice, clever pet, had just been studying his “Journalists & Photographers Guide To The Law”.)
O’Toole: “I fookin’ NUT yer if yer don’t giz that film.”
Conroy: “You do and I’ll sue you.”
By this time a huge crowd had gathered in the afternoon sunshine to enjoy the sport.
Conroy: “Right, that’s it, I’m calling the police.”
Rutherford: “We’ll fookin’ take yer, we’re take yer.”
The fuzz arrive.
Boys In Blue: “Ello, ‘ello, ‘ello, what’s all this then? Just who are you?”
Rutherford: “We’re Frankie and this guy ‘ere has been taking photos of us.”
Boys In Blue: “Is this true?”
Conroy: “Yes I did!”
Boys In Blue: “Well, if someone took a photograph of me trying on clothes I wouldn’t mind. Now just go away.”
Crowd disperses, disappointed.
Rutherford said later he was sick to death of the growing legions of pararazzi plagueing every move that Frankie made. As for Conroy, he disappeared to Bouverie Street to sell his story to the News Of The World before giving us an exclusive interview about the incident.
“I’d like to say,” he told us, “I did not try to get Ped with his knickers down as was reported in The Sun. That is rubbish. There is no way I was going to let them push me around.