"Somewhere between intelligence and care in the community" – on interviewing Falco

Thanks to Houman's organisation skills and a general correspondence with Andy Falkous over the years, we got to travel to Cardiff to interview him about his new band Future of the Left and crash on his floor. Fairly soon that interview will be made public but I thought I'd 'blog' the 27 hours or so we spent in Wales.

We arrived a few hours early and immediately decided to get the most touristy pictures possible outside the station. Here's the one I took of Houman and Pete, our photographer and general calming influence:

http://theogb.com/media/falco_interview/01_tourist_pose.jpg

As you can see, we clearly needed to get some drink down us. I rang Hannah82 since she was organising to meet other DiSsers in Cardiff and she gave us directions to the bar as best she could, given (apparently) that it's a nightmare directing people from the station. It actually wasn't too bad, and once I'd rung her a few times to make absolutely sure I wasn't lost, we got there okay.

Initially I questioned whether people in Wales kept all their money in their mattresses, but the dearth of cash points soon cleared and we were able to remove much-needed cash. Houman kept pointing out how nice the pubs we passed looked and it was a shame we didn't manage to do a decent little pub crawl, but we did take a quick snap of Houman outside this fabulously named little beauty:

http://theogb.com/media/falco_interview/02_the_goat_major.jpg

At Henry's I was pleased to find I could get pints of my favourite Kronie Blanc. Despite directing me there Hannah wasn't yet in attendance, something that really shouldn't have surprised me, but she arrived soon after with her mother. We proceeded to swear like troopers in front of her but thankfully this didn't go down badly at all. Monpot arrived with his mate Dave soon after and then yo_soy_welshmun, fresh from buying some possibly Latino-tinged fun from Fopp. Sickboy was apparently sticking too strongly to his name and therefore couldn't attend; honorary_welsh_steph was at a food festival and then birthday celebrations, so "sadface" for those two.

After a few pints we got the call from Falco (apparently wearing a white t-shirt, a red rose and Batman shoes) who we met outside Primark. He was almost unrecognisable as he now has hair down to his chin in a style he described as 'the mushroom' (with a grimace). Initially the plan had been to sit in the park with alcohol but this was revised to the beer garden of the Pen and Wig, a definitely very nice pub. The interview took up the next two or three hours with Falco doing his best to sit in the sun as much as possible. I now have a lobster-tinge to my face and arms, but that's my own fault.
Houman had informed me on the train up that I was to be conducting the interview so I'd hastily scribbled down some vague question ideas but we mainly relied on the idea of leaving the recorder running while we got drunk and talked rubbish...and obviously some important stuff too.

With the interview over, Andy had to go back home for a few hours so we did some shots then went out to find an Oddbins we thought we'd seen in order to do some drinking in the park. This was a total failure so we ended up in a pub that I couldn't pronounce let alone remember the name of. But it was big and we sat outside opposite a stag do where (apparently) the stag had had to go home vomiting hours earlier. At one point a hen night came past and one of the guys got his cock out to show the ladies (they seemed to be encouraging this). We drank white wine with a red Aftershock chaser.

The final stages of the evening all occurred back in the Pen and Wig with more wine and later rum and soda with lime, drink idea courtesy of monpot who joined us with Dave and at least one other mate of his: at this point the night was already having a certain haze to it. Pete managed to take photos of Falco and then fell asleep while Houman began to get seriously fucked and I tried to drink down as much water as possible in an attempt to convince Falco that he hadn't just invited a bunch of pissheads to talk bollocks at him.

Like me, Andy likes to walk fast and so we'd had to stop a few times to let the other two catch up, and as we got to the house we finally 'lost' Houman again (he'd in fact been answering a call of nature) causing Falco to state "It's somewhere between intelligence and care in the community".

Falco's house was (as you might expect) very cool and had an impressively large living room where we all bedded down. Here are three great things I found there:

http://theogb.com/media/falco_interview/03_chicken_the_cat.jpg
Chicken, Falco's cat, who was very friendly, soft and fluffy.

http://theogb.com/media/falco_interview/04_bowling_ball.jpg
Erm...I think this is self-explanatory.

http://theogb.com/media/falco_interview/05_atp.jpg
This was just a really cool little framing. I should do this with all my ATP stuff, though obviously it wouldn't include an artist's pass. Boo…

In the morning Falco tried to find us a greasy spoon recommended by his housemate but it all went wrong and in the end we got to a Wetherspoons on City Road and said our goodbyes and had the cheap and cheerful cholesterol-filled breakfasts they were doing. No seagulls tried to take it from us, which was a blessing. Finally we got some beers and snacks and repaired to the park before having to leg it to the train station to catch a hot train.

On the way I took this beautifully posed shot of Pete:
http://theogb.com/media/falco_interview/06_boulevard.jpg

Pete and Houman wiped out a bottle of vodka between them on the train while sitting in first class (without the necessary tickets) while I just fell asleep in my 'standard' class seat.