In the summer months of 1989, the Swinging Blue Jeans, The Rubettes and Cavern infiltrated the Berlin Wall and descended upon unsuspecting towns throughout the old DDP (East Germany) to give em a taste of rockn'roll!

Surprisingly, everyone arrived at the right terminal at Heathrow at the right time - not easy for musicians of any nationality. After checking in our baggage, instruments and a variety or tennis bats (At first we thought Boris Becker was on the show) but they turned out to be the property of Alan Williams (the Rod Laver of Southend) we went through and waited for our flight to be called.

Our flight out from Heathrow had been somewhat of an eyeopener. The aircraft was a Soviet built Ilyushin which came complete with its own set of rather dubious looking and unattractive cabin crew. As take-off time arrived and the engines were switched on plumes of vapour poured into the cabin which caused panic amongst the passengers and resulted in Phil The Drums Thompson immediately reaching for his anti-trench gas mask, an item left to him in the will of his great uncle Norman, an old campaigner who had served on the Somme.

On our arrival in East Berlin, we were tumbled into our tour bus and rumbled a million miles to our first gig at Wiemar. Following the show, we returned to our surprisingly nice hotel and the EBC (Elbow Bending Club) readied itself for the first onslaught. Les (the piano) Braid, Our own tame Bobby Crush, went off in search of a decent piano with which to entertain us with a selection of Winifred Attwell's most memorable hits. Unfortunately due to the electricity in the entire town going to an SBO (snap blackout), Les wandered along a series of corridors and through endless doors eventually emerginq on the other side of the building. Meanwhile. in the darkened lounge, a vast amount of East German beer was sampled by the EBC while Alan Williams stood in the dark talking to a suit of armour in the misguided belief that he was chatting to the town mayor.

Pete 'Biffo' Barton of Cavern decided to purchase the entire catalogue of East German camera equipment. Each morning, whilst the rest of the show was taking breakfast a glance through the window would see young Biffo returntng to the hotel fully laden with Practica lenses like a Japanise tourist! Sadly, on reaching the town of Magdeburg and loadinq the bus, the suitcase containing camera tackle was hit by a wayward Trabant which after pushing it 200yds along the road eventually got up enough steam to run over it much to Biffo's disgust!

Allan Williams had continually challenged everyone to an early morning game of tennis, and by Magdeburg I think he was fed up with thrashing various Rubettes six love, so he invited our rather athletic looking tour manager to a match. Later, as we sat in the hotel lounge relaxing prior to lunch, an extremely dishevelled Williams miandered into view, breathing rather heavily, with the toe out of his plimsole, carrying a bent tennis bat and with his head band on back to front (at least I think it was his head band). It turned out that our athletic tour manager had thrashed the Southend Champ six love, six love! Surprisingly, the tennis challenges faded out and the tennis bats were never seen again, wonder why!

The classic pay off came at Schoenefeld airport on our return journey to the UK. We had been paid in West German marks and had given all our east marks to the interpreter for her six year old son, who duly became the youngest east mark millionaire in the DDR. After checking in, we headed for the departure lounge, only to find our flight had been delayed by a couple of hours. Now this really was a disastrous situation, as if we gave a 100DM note for a round of beers, we would almost certainly get 95 East Marks change, and at that time you could not take East Marks out of the DDR!

Yippee! Disaster was averted when Mal Cook our Touren Furher produced three East German 5 mark coins he had secreted about his person to add to his collection of totally worthless coins he has hoarded over the years. The roar from the members of the E.B.C. would have drowned the Kop at Anfield, so Mal sat back and watched the scramble for the bar. Everyone had a beer and I still got change. Ennis noticed a phone nearby and decided to phone Hal Carter in his Palmers Green Bunker.

The East Mark was dropped into the slot, number dialled and a surprisingly long conversation (twenty minutes) at least took place between Ennis in Berlin and Carter in the Palmers Green Bunker. Everyone had a go. Some telephoned girl friends, others wives. Some even telephoned their girl friends and their wives! After every phone call when the hand set was replaced, out came the one mark Coin to be used again and again. lnternational calls were made from that phone for over two hours, Somehow Allan Williams twigged what was happening and requested to have a go. Crawling like mad, Williams opted to phone home. He put the coin into the box, dialled the number and five seconds after the other end had answered the beeps went!

But everything wasn't over yet bits of Blue Jeans & Caverns luggage went to heathrow, while at Manchester Colin Manley spied half a dozen broken tennis bats going around on the carousel. H M Customs had a field day, especially with Cavern and all their Praktica Camera equipment. Still.......win some, lose some!

P.S. We took a photograph of a guy looking over the Berlin Wall and we're all convinced its Dave Berry on a sightseeing tour before learning that his West Berlin solo disco appearance had been cancelled

Main EBC Page