we're so trendy? but who is the modernist...

Taking care of Futurism in 1982


Tainted Love is number 1, Pam Ayres is on Wogan and Marc Almond has his stomach pumped.

Barry Broadcasts jingles for Oxford shopping centre on Radio Oxford.

Ursula buys a Mina bird and calls it HD.

The Mina bird starts to copy Barry's jingles.

Ursula hires Dr Doolittle to re-program the bird.

Dr Doolittle turns out to be the grandson of DH Lawrence.

Dr Doolittle and Barry fall out out over the arrival of Amy Knowall from America and wrestle each other naked (Barry wearing a glowstick necklace) in front of Mabels 2 bar electric fire.

Knowall refuses to appear in Domestic Cherry alongside Mabel and threatens to destroy the annual.

Barry is arrested in a car park in Bath and is sent to a Stratton mental hospital for slandering the Brunel Centre.

Mabel's mother, Eliza Pound, has asked her to go and see Roger McGough at Newbury. Mabel has never been to Newbury. Mabel hasn't seen her mother since she ran off with a paedophile  20 years ago. The last communication they had was a recipe for fruit cake. Barry said, 'the relationship with your mum seems to have been one long fruitcake of events Mabel.'

Roy was in Chieveley working on a project commissioned by Caspar Garland to photograph a KFC Family Bucket in every franchise across Berkshire.

When Roy saw a red camper in the disabled bay with a 'For Sale' £5000 note in the window, he immediately thought of Barry Dicks, the windscreen visor BARRY & MABEL above fluffy cherries clinched it. What was that Hi-VIS Lo-Morals merchant up to this time and how did Mabel fit into the story? Roy felt something warm on his foot, it was a breast, one of Colonel Sanders'. He had been so engrossed in his attempt to rumble Dicks that the bottom of his bucket had disintegrated under a layer of grease: more breasts and wings slumped to the floor. Roy was attempting to pick the fried chicken up when he heard the saliva sluicing tones of Barry Dicks just behind him, 'finger lickin' good is it Roy?'

Roy didn't even give Barry the satisfaction of him looking up, but was compelled to listen as the stop start motor mouth spilled the details of his latest project. 'I'm just off to Cairo via Yugoslavia on a top-secret mission.' A small crowd had gathered to listen outside the RAC Promotions Hut, Barry clambered onto the roof of the camper and continued,

     'Mabel's bringing the camper back tonight, we're off to RAF Northolt together, where my                   human visibilty skills will be flying off to the Sahara to find Mark Thatcher

The crowd had now been boosted by the arrival of a Wallace Arnold coach full of pensioners on their way to the matinee performance of ' the Romans in Britain' at the South Hill Park Arts Centre in Bracknell. 

     Finishing his speech with a call to arms and the cryptic statement that, 

'I can see the son of Maggie in a grain of sand.' Barry jumped down to whoops and cheers. Roy was crouched over his bent cardboard bucket, attempting to protect the chicken from being trod into the car-park by the zip up slippers of the third age theatre fans.

It was the same week that Dani Androlove, a Polish poet from Penhill, tried to stab Barry with a pair of Ursula's tweezers during the latter's denouncement of the song from the future, You're My Favourite Waste of Time (1986) as being a one hit wonder. Barry contented himself by using a marker pen to black out every poem in her notebook and writing.