1977 and 1978 was a great fun year turning into a less fun year. Our first break was supporting the Boomtown Rats at the Marquee. One of their members, Gerry Cott, was an old friend of mine from Dublin. However, the Boomtown Rats were determined to be scrupulously fair and not to indulge in any favouritism so far as I was concerned. They agreed to us having the privilege of standing on the same stage as their own good selves, but only if we first went around the West End sticking up their very streetwise posters in appropriate places. I think they originally wanted us to do it with our tongues, but we managed to get out of that one. Unfortunately they couldn't do it themselves because the only part of London they appeared to know was the Kings Road.

Every Saturday they walked up and down the Kings Road like lost souls, afraid to turn off or get separated from the pack in case they might not be able to find their way back to the car, carefully provided to whisk them back to their safe suburban home in Chessington for another week. And, of course, they didn't want to get arrested. So we stuck the posters up. Phil, our bass player, did get arrested. I, true to form, ran away.

We released our first recording on a compilation LP called "Live at the Vortex". It was awful. But we were stars. We even got offered the Boomtown Rats upcoming tour.

So with our first tour laying before us our manager "Uncle Peter" went out and bought a van. Knowing nothing about motors he took advice from a mechanic friend. We should have been suspicious since this "mechanic friend" had also helped Peter choose a previous motor for me which had died in a matter of days. But what did we care. We had a van! At long last we were a real band.

Shortly afterwards we set off for our first gig on the tour. I think it was Leeds. Thundering up the M1, about midway between London and Leeds, strange thuds started to emanate from under the van's bonnet. Slower and slower we went, until we finally ground go a halt. Smoke was pouring from the bonnet. To this day, every time I drive past this particular part of the M1 my blood chills. Panic! The tour, the gig ... what could we do? Stardom was still beckoning from about one hundred miles farther north. What would Fachtna, the Boomtown Rat's manager, say? What would Bob say? Short sentences containing many repetitions of a certain word starting with "F" echoed through our minds. Oh, the shame of it! Ejected from the stadiums of our minds on to the hard shoulder of reality in such a short space of time. It just was not fair. We wallowed briefly in despair, though I dimly remember Mark Harrison actually being more upset about not being able to place some money on a certain horse in the 3 O'clock at Kempton Park.

Now something quite unusual happened. "Uncle Peter" quickly embraced his managerial role and snatched a solution from the jaws of disaster. A nearby motorway service station, and ... a taxi! What, all the way to Leeds? Yes, of course. Peter was the man with the money ... well, more than any of us. And he said he would pay. Considering that the taxi bill was probably more than we were getting for the entire tour, this was no small gesture. Clutching our guitars and a few drum bits and pieces we left all our backline and tumbled into a taxi. We were off again. We would borrow the Boomtown Rat's backline. After all, we were all in it together and the show must go on.

Unfortunately, when we finally got to the gig the Boomtown Rats did not see things in quite that light. Not at first, anyway. It took some persuading to get them to let dirty us use their nice clean backline. Eventually, however, they very kindly did.

The gig itself was abysmal. I think it was the only time I have ever played on stage with a little combo amplifier. I could hear myself think. Awful, not a pleasant experience at all. I could hear the audience think too. They thought we were crap.

However, our problems had only just started. We had nowhere to sleep, only a broken down van to go home to. To our eternal thanks Peter got another taxi and we drove back to our immobile Transit. It felt like home.

A dim plan now started to form in the recesses of our brains. The AA! They could tow us, plus van, backline and all to the next gig. (For those of you who don't know, the AA is the Automobile Association. They tow broken down vehicles and their passengers to their destination).

So it was on to Coventry. And having played Coventry we were towed on to somewhere else which I can't remember now. This continued throughout the tour. We lived for a few days in terror of being sussed out by the AA. Luckily, it was always a different AA man! How many did they have? I suppose if they had sussed us we could have gone on and joined the RAC (Royal Automobile Club) instead, but things never became that bad. And so, some few days later, we found ourselves back in London, a bit unkempt, somewhat worn, a little older and a lot wiser. Been on tour, man!