Comics, where shall I start this time ? Best news of the past couple of weeks (hmmm… TC “production delays” seem to have extended this to couple of months!) has been the final re-release of The Crow, meaning that you can get it reasonably cheaply, and that J. O’Barr gets to finish it off. The first two books reprinted the original four Caliber issues, and the third (a 64 page single issue entitled Death) will complete this tale of love stronger than death. If you haven’t read it yet, now’s your chance, if you have read it, then wait a few months and you’ll finally get the conclusion.

Continuing on the conclusion front, Hard Boiled issue three has arrived and is a suitably down-beat ending to a marvellous series: the art’s still stunning; the stories nicely dystopian; all in all it remains highly recommended. The Griffin has finished too, issue six tying up the loose ends in a pleasant easy style. Not all that much new about it I suppose, but it is very nicely done. And the final final issue here is issue 12 of Metropol, in which the good guys are finally gathered and an assortment of loose ends are left to pave the way for Metropol AD, coming in autumn… I guess you can also expect a collected Metropol around then.

Beyond this, all seems steady on the comics front… the most looked forward to titles for me at the moment are: Hellblazer; Sandman; Akira; Dark Horse Presents (particularly for Frank Miller’s Sin City, Matt Wager’s The Aerialist, and the Rick Veitch weirdness, but always enjoyable nonetheless); Yummy Fur; Shade; Cry For Dawn; and Legends Of The Dark Knight. Unfortunately, LOTDK is now reaching the “buy it if the particular story-line is up to it” stage, early on it managed to always be worth a look, but the Destroyer cross-over series killed that run of. All in all, it’s oldies-but-goodies I guess. Akira has the lowest issue count of the above (if I use a spot of artistic licence and forget Yummy Fur which has never really a regular production), but with only about four or so of the 34 issues coming out last year, it’s still the titles of three or four years ago that are listed. Sad, innit ?

That’s pretty much it. It’s sad but true, I’m finding it tough to find new comics I like. There’s hope for Hard Looks (a new series of Andrew Vachss short stories that’s due out from Dark Horse but not yet spotted, even after TC production delays…), but we’ll have to wait and see. As things stand, this could be the last comics waffle for a while, either that or the old stuff gets dragged out for review yet again!

Lately I’ve topped up the back-catalogue with handy graphic-novel sized collections of titles such as V for Vendetta and Elektra Assassin. They’re much better for reading on buses/trains/tubes than handfuls of individual issues… plus, of course, it’s damn good stuff anyway.

It’s happened again… once I decide that nothing sooper is around, other bits start grabbing my attention. Recent manga sightings are Sanctuary and Crying Freeman vol. 4 both of which: come appropriately recommended; deal with modern day organized crime in Japan and have art by Ryoichi Ikegami. There are also graphic novel collections of Freeman volumes 1 & 2, which do a good job of setting the story and avoid those annoying month+ delays between issues. Another recent addition is A1 book 6 (the final one, and probably the cheapest at £2.95) which ties things up in the style A1 readers will have become accustomed to… i.e by announcing a final-final issue, to be known as A1-6B, The Zirk Low-Brow Woo-Woo Special. This will feature (& I quote!) B.E.M.s, Babes, Boobs ‘n’ Bombs, Bullets, Buttfucks ‘n’ Bastards… need I say more!

Serious mood-swing alert…

Just when I thought that comics were entering a seriously boring phase, our friendly Customs & Excise come along and decide they’re still too much for their half-assed definition of obscene. This is a 2.5 cans of Stella rant [later edited at 3.5 cans!], but is straight from a pissed off heart. A readers copies of Sandman 33 and Hellblazer 48 were seized by HM Customs as they contained (genuine quote!!) “…some scenes of violence and mutilation…”. Unlike (available at a video shop near you!) Silence Of The you-know-whats [I’m afraid to mention the full name in case I get branded a subversive and strip-searched every time I go through Customs from now on].

In fact, those particular issues weren’t even all that heavy really. Issue 48 of Hellblazer had some bastards getting their come-uppance for burning an old dear to death in 47, and Sandman 33 has (as it’s “mutilation” scene…) a demonic chap opening himself up to let some crows out… so they’re not very nice crows, but so what – that’s part of why Sandman prefers mature readers. Guess I’ve been completely corrupted by them. Somehow the gothic horror of Sandman & Hellblazer don’t seem any more horrific than the excesses of the press and all the other brown-tonguing lackeys. No wonder UK life seems such a pisser when you can’t even read mature material.

Intriguingly, I Want To Be Your Dog was judged as being worthy of “…reservations about the content”, but not obscene, and hence, theoretically, importable. This is not a mainstream title. This is a title from Eros comics, who had most of Butterscotch kept out of the country, and very few companies risking trying to bring anything else in. Maybe a further quote will help to show why the risks of importing “interesting ” titles are so panic-inducing for the importers…

“The package also contained a further two comics which, although not considered to be of themselves obscene, are still liable to forfeiture under the provisions of Section 14(1)(b) of the Customs and Excise Management Act 1979, having been mixed, packed or found with goods liable to forfeiture.”

So, basically, get one dodgy comic sent across with a couple of thousand X-Men issues, and risk losing the lot. Would you think it was worth the risk, or would you let yourself be suppressed ?

Okay, so the titles were allowed in eventually (apart from the obscene ones from DC, corrupt underground publishers that they are!) but still, the necessity of law suits to import comics that have been bought, by myself, from such establishment esteemed places as the Virgin megastore on Oxford Street [okay, so it’s a real comic-shop with a franchise there, but it still looks & feels like you’re shopping at Virgin] is genuinely ludicrous.

Please HMC & E, show some sense. Comics are not a medium for children. They are a medium, no better or worse than any other. Don’t take episodes from the middle of story-lines (both the above were the second issues of their respective tales) and damn the carrier as obscene. Although I realise that this is a huge amount to ask, think of more than just a line that you see, try and finds the context for any content. Even better, find a full life that makes you realize just how much good fiction there is that your narrow minds currently reject. Roll on 1993, and a Europe unified against petty bureaucracy… so we can hope.

If you think Hollywood is into sequels, look at Hong Kong, where a successful movie will immediately, if not sooner, spawn a host of variations on the same theme. Jackie Chan’s “Police Story” kicked off a tidal wave of cop thrillers, some better, some worse: perhaps the most consistently interesting series of clones is ‘In the Line of Duty’, produced by D&B Films, all the more remarkable as, to some extent, it isn’t really a series at all…

It all began with the discovery of a girl called Yeung Chi King by the head of D&B, multi-millionaire Dickson Poon – though since she was Miss Malaysia, ‘discovery’ might be a bit strong! He decided she was going to be a star, despite her lack of martial arts and acting skills: some training and a few small parts later (she appears in ‘Twinkle, Twinkle Lucky Stars’, ending up under Samo Hung), she was ready for her first major role:

In the Line of Duty 2 (Corey Yuen)

• Yeung Chi King, Cynthia Rothrock, John Sham, Richard Ng.
• [a.k.a. ‘Yes, Madam ‘, UK title: ‘Police Assassins 2’]

Yeung Chi King is a cop awaiting the arrival of an English contact with evidence on one of Hong Kong’s mob bosses. Before it’s delivered, he is assassinated but the hitman is unable to find the evidence. The people who do find it are two burglars who soon find the mob and the police on their tail.

Behind perhaps the worst piece of cover art in existence, this is an odd, identikit sort of movie which in the UK version opens with a sequence taken from another movie, then meanders for 65 minutes before exploding into one of the best climaxes to any martial arts movie I’ve seen. Cynthia Rothrock, at that time a near-unknown, played a tough Scotland Yard officer, nicknamed ‘Dirty Carrie’, sent over to help, though the dubbing makes her sound like a Sloane Ranger.

Yeung holds her own well, both in action and acting, and the movie is ok, despite a tendency to stage sequences in the dark. However, the final showdown between the pair, now ex-cops, and the mob is incredible, with much leaping about and demolition of bad guys (including one very painful stunt fall the poor man falls off one balcony 20 ft up, bounces off another and crashes to the un-matted floor): this alone is worth seeing and is followed by an ending best described as “nihilist vigilante”. C+, most of which is gained in the last quarter of an hour.

For various reasons this film was put on the shelf but this didn’t stop D&B from making a pseudo-sequel…

In the Line of Duty (David Chung)

• Yeung Chi King, Hiroyuki Sanada, Michael Wong.
• [a.k.a. ‘Royal Warriors’, UK title: ‘Police Assassins’]

The Vietnam war: A group of men pledge eternal loyalty to each other. The present day: one of them is being extradited from Tokyo to Hong Kong, and a hijack attempt, planned by his blood brothers to rescue him, is foiled by Yeung, Sanada and Wong, who thus find themselves the target for vengeance by the remaining fanatics. They blow up Sanada’s wife and child, kidnap Wong and use him as a lure for Yeung. Though this fails for surprising reasons I won’t give away, they eventually get her to a final show-down.

Despite an opening sequence which, like Sanada, seems to have been included to appeal to a Japanese audience, this is a more even and satisfying film than it’s predecessor. The hijack is well-staged and writer-director Chung is willing to kill off characters, leaving the viewer wondering if this will be a “heroic bloodshed”, everyone dies, film. Especially towards the end, the plot twists and turns, although the final battle doesn’t contain much in the way of martial arts, becoming almost an exercise in the imaginative use of pyrotechnics. This is something of a disappointment after the delights of ‘Yes, Madam’! Still, C+ again, though in a very different manner!

This was released and did sufficiently well to prod D&B into taking ‘Yes, Madam’ off the shelf. Both were picked up for European distribution by Atlas, who suggested giving Yeung a more Western sounding name: ‘Michelle Khan’ was chosen and this is her billing on British releases. Another title change was required here because another film called ‘Line of Duty’ had recently been released, so they became ‘Police Assassins’ 1 & 2, Atlas managing to get them back to front! However, two films later, ‘Magnificent Warriors’ (see TC10) and ‘Easy Money’, Yeung married Dickson Poon and retired from film-making, though rumours of her divorce and return to the screen have been circulating. D&B would not let a trifle like losing their leading lady stop them, so they brought in a new starlet, Yang Li Ching (a.k.a. Cynthia Khan) and continued the series.

In the Line of Duty 3 (Brandy Yuen/Arthur Wong)

• Yang Li Ching, Hiroshi Fujioka, Michiko Nishiwaki.
• No UK release, but the rights have been acquired by VPD

Two Japanese terrorists raid a jewellery show, to raise money for weapons, only to find that the gems are fake and they’ve been duped by the guy running it, as an insurance scam. To gain revenge, they travel to Hong Kong, followed by a rogue cop whose partner they gunned down. Poor Cynthia has to keep the peace while also handling her superior, who’d rather have her doing the typing.

Under the shallow sounding plot, this is actually subtle, with the characters given more motivation than normal. Even the ‘villains’ – I use quotes since neither terrorists nor rogue cops are cardboard cliches – provoke as much sympathy as dislike, particularly Fujioka. Although again there is as much gun-fu as kung-fu, the action mixes with the plot almost seamlessly and is hot stuff, especially when Cynthia takes on Michiko Nishiwaki, a former Japanese power-lifting champ but very cute none the less. The battles have a gritty realism about them, with people taking damage and looking more and more battered as things progress. There’s a high mortality rate in interesting ways, most notably the death by industrial drill (even if it’s no Abel Ferrara). Overall, it’s an exception to the general rule that sequels are only good if you have the same people involved making them. B+

In the Line of Duty 4 (Yuen Wo Ping)

• Cynthia Khan, Donnie Yen.
• [a.k.a. ‘The Witness’. UK title: ‘In the Line of Duty’]

A variation on the theme of ‘Yes, Madam’, that of evidence ending up in the hands of someone who doesn’t know it’s worth. It begins in America, where a policeman taking pictures of a CIA endorsed drug deal is gunned down. Before dying, he passes the film onto an immigrant worker, who soon discovers a lot of people want it. After his brother is gunned down, he escapes to Hong Kong, pursued by Khan & Yen (a classic good-cop/bad-cop pairing), plus another policeman who is an undercover CIA agent.

This is a perfect example of the strengths and weaknesses of Hong Kong action films. In the English version (I’ve not seen the Hong Kong print), the story looks like someone removed massive sections, as things suddenly happen without noticeable explanation. Fortunately, the action is incredible and virtually non-stop, so you don’t notice the holes until about the third viewing. The highlights include Cynthia Khan demonstrating her prowess with nunchaku spanners (cut by the BBFC, naturally!), an ambulance battle where she out-Indianas Harrison Ford, and a final 10 minutes where everyone shows off their fighting skills, though these are only peaks in a distinctly high-altitude movie: given a better plot, this would have been the first kung-fu film to get A+, but A will have to do.

In the Line of Duty 5 (Cha Chuen Yee)

• Cynthia Khan, David Wu
• [a.k.a. ‘The Middleman’, No British release]

Once again, the CIA are involved, together with a spy ring who have a nasty habit of terminating anyone who gets in their way. Unfortunately, this includes David, the cousin of Insp. Yang Lei Ching (Khan), who’s been dropped in it by a CIA double agent, and is now on the run from the spy ring, the police and the CIA. He’s not the only person to be dragged in – most of these fail to make it to the end of the movie.

The first shock is that there’s no martial arts for about 30 minutes, by which point you’re wondering whether this is an Oriental soap opera. Then, with the sort of bang! you only get when someone falls onto a car roof from a great height, someone falls onto a car roof etc, etc, and things warm up. They continue to improve in a sporadic fashion until the climax, the only bit where the fights rival IV in the series. It does have it’s moments, but overall it fails to gel, though it improved on the second viewing it received for this article. I’d blame the faults on the script-writer, who would seem to have overdosed on John Le Carre, perhaps NOT the best preparation for a martial arts film. D-.

One borderline case worth a mention is Queen’s High, which has been touted as ‘In the Line of Duty – The Beginning’ (‘In the Line of Duty 0’?). This is dubious, as Cynthia Khan’s character is a gangster’s daughter rather than a cop, whose wedding is rudely interrupted by the massacre of her family by another gang. Plot summary: revenge.

Such a story can be forgiven when it’s delivered with such over-the-top panache. Cynthia Khan in full flow, wearing a virgin white wedding dress and spraying automatic gunfire everywhere, is nearly a religious experience. This is fortunate, because up until then, it’s been slow to the point of tedium. One wonders why they carefully built up the other characters, only to casually blown away in a five-minute spell. The second half is markedly better, in a “you killed just about all my relations and you are certainly going to pay” fashion as Cynthia wears knee-length boots and wipes the floor with the opposition. For once, the music is not ripped off from anywhere else (Eastern films, Western films, Jean-Michael Jarre) and is very simple and effective. First half E, second half B+, wedding sequence A+, overall, oh, let’s say B-.

D&B Films have shown, with this series and their other films, that they can compete with the big boys like Golden Harvest. Cynthia Khan is now probably their biggest star – she also has a small role in the recently released ‘Tiger Cage’, which as you might expect, was known in Hong Kong as ‘Tiger Cage 2’! Despite the relative disappointment of part 5, further parts in the series are planned, and I’m certainly looking forward to them.

If you were alive during the 1980’s, you must have heard of them. They were the lone voice from the rear end of the stifled Punk era, both indomitable and incorruptible by the conspiratorial masses of conformist manipulators. He was their driving frontman, navigating their route, unafraid to yell. It’s been quite a few years since the Dead Kennedys disbanded, but lead singer/lyricist/writer Jello Biafra is still the untamed wildman of the US alternative music scene.

The name Biafra first scalded the lips of his fellow San Franciscans back in 1977, when he ran for mayor of that city. The reason? A practical joke, of course – what better reason to run for office?! Among the many novel ideas that constituted his platform were intentions to: legalise squatting in buildings left vacant for tax write-off reasons; create a legal board of bribery; pass a regulation that all downtown business-men wear clown suits from 9 to 5; and insist that police officers run for election every four years, voted in by the people they patrol. All of which provide some early indicators as to his leanings.

And, as the SF mayoral campaign dictates, all candidates get equal air time on TV. So you can imagine how the audience got plenty of chuckles with Jello’s constructive satire. Actually, he came in 4th place, out of ten, giving the supposedly ‘serious’ candidates a much need kick up the ass.

However, 1980 was the year that the Dead Kennedys gave America some vital victuals with their first album, “Fresh Fruit for Rotting Vegetables”. A classic of socio-political hardcore protein, served up in a suppository of thrash/punk attitude, creating the ideal vehicle for their intravenous venom. Titles like ‘Kill the Poor’, ‘California Uber Alles’, ‘Holiday in Cambodia’ and the infamously-banned-by-the-Beeb, ‘Too Drunk to Fuck’, gave a breath of Amethyl Nitrate to a slowly decaying scene and elevated the Kennedys to the status of mythical icons in the underground halls of glory as well as a place on Reagan’s subversive list! While retaining the attitude of punk, their successive albums transcended the limits imposed, while Biafra’s lyrics introduced wider topics to the arc-light of their ethos and vision. Little escaped the glare.

It was 1983 though, when their ‘Frankenchrist’ album incurred the wrath of the Parents Music Resource Centre – a group of ultra-right wing wives of Washington Senators, banding together to wipe the collective asses of “unclean” music. The controversy was over a poster by H.R.Giger, given away with the record. Commonly known as ‘Penis Landscape’, the prosecutor of the band (for breaching the obscenity laws) described it as “Ten erect penises entering rotting vaginal cavities”.

The trial gained nationwide coverage as it was revealed that the PMRC were choosing a ‘soft’ target to prosecute, as a test case, thus opening the door for multiple prosecutions at their whim. Chief members of the PMRC include Tipper Gore (who, as mentioned in a previous TC, allegedly caught her daughter “doing things” while listening to a Prince song) and Susan Baker, wife of Secretary of State James (she is on record as saying “God really calls me to be his instrument”. Comments welcome). Of course, this much publicised moral crusade did little to harm the reps of the husbands.

It was now that the Dead Kennedys set up the famous ‘No More Censorship’ fund and with the help of the American Civil Liberties Union, they won, partly by showing how unconstitutional the censorship campaign was. But, while proving their mettle, the damage had been done. They disbanded, after releasing a swan-song album in ’85, “Bedtime for Democracy”, though a compilation followed, proving that you can’t keep good satire down.

But what was it that made them so effective? The strength lay in their Art (and make no mistake, that’s what it was), commitment and ability. Biafra took phenomena offensive to human rights in general and manifests the cancer for all to see clearly, with his unique rhetoric and style. He ‘assumes’ the blatant face of the offending party, be they censors, corrupt politicians, cheesy musician hacks, religious nuts, dictators, or just callous money grubfucks. He then personifies and lampoons them, showing their true parisitical faces in the process, the antithesis of those who’d rather remain nameless for increased efficiency.

The Kennedy’s may have disbanded, but Biafra’s voice is still with us.

Recently, he appeared on the Oprah Winfrey show, in the defence of musical freedom, pitted against Mrs. Gore. Events spoke for themselves. He, smartly dressed in a suit, well-spoken and of obvious intelligence, maintained a rational air, as opposed to Tipper’s ranting, maniacal zealot dictator attitude. He was a perfect ambassador, more than a match for her, especially when he revealed on live, prime-time TV that she had just categorically lied to the audience.

If you want more info, write to: Alternative Tentacles Records, 64 Mountgrove Road, London N5 2LT. Send an SAE. Can you afford not to hear his message, in this conspiratorial world? Guaranteed 100% better value than David Icke!

Ten days in California had vaccinated me against most forms of weirdness but virtually the first person in San Francisco we spoke to reminded us just how different a place this was. Steve and I went up to the reception in a perfectly normal, recommended tourist hotel and I asked for a room. Only in San Franciso could the reply possibly be “Will that be a double bed or two singles?”.

Having affirmed our heterosexuality, we discovered the hotel was down near the waterfront, possibly the most schlock-filled area of land I’ve ever seen, culminating in Pier 41, a bizarre mutant offspring of Covent Garden and Carnaby Street with all the fake neo-historical charm of a restaged medieval banquet. Still, they had an NFL shop, where I finally managed to get a Minnesota Vikings shirt – never seen over here because Vikings fans aren’t exactly numerous (like I’ve never met another one!) – so I was happy. Once again, we bumped into that nightmarish creature, sales tax, by which a similarly arbitrary percentage is added to all prices after they’ve been totted up at the check-out. A bit like secret VAT, it provoked much embarrassing fumbling in pockets for additional dollars.

The evening was spent in another “English pub”, though this was actually an Irish one, and was slightly better i.e. the Guinness was treated with the respect it deserves. One major difference between Britain and California drinking houses, that took a while to sink in, is that American bars don’t have any one-armed bandits – gambling being more or less illegal. With no fruit machines or quiz games to distract with the lure of money, we ended up playing darts, while watching baseball on the TV, which was definitely surreal.

It’s always comforting to realise that some things are the same across the world. the Blockbuster Video store is one of these; we popped into one on the way home and were comforted to discover the same, sanitised decor, the same inanely grinning staff, and the same 500-copies-of-Home-Alone-and-nothing-much-else contents.

We only had one full day in San Francisco, and we started off by going to Alcatraz, the notorious “escape-proof” penal establishment. It was actually only a jail for about 30 years, from the mid 30’s to the mid 60’s, but it’s still probably the most famous prison in the world. Some of the stories that have grown up round it are myths – the “Birdman of Alcatraz”, Robert Stroud, never had any birds during his time in Alcatraz – but sometimes the truth is pretty weird. It was the only Federal jail where the inmates had compulsory hot showers. This was to prevent them from getting used to cold water – a necessary prerequisite of any attempt to swim to the mainland.

San Franciso is indeed notably cooler than other parts of California. When we left San Jose, most of our luggage stayed there as we’d be coming back for the flight to LA -having suffered four days of 90 degree heat, I left all my jerseys behind, only to find that in the forty miles between San Jose and San Francisco the temperature drops about 30 degrees. As well as chilly, Frisco’s also hilly, probably even more so than it looks on TV. If you get tired walking round it, you can always lean against it.

We’d noticed in the paper that ‘A Chinese Ghost Story III’ was showing, so decided that might be worth a trip. However, on the way to the cinema, we passed another Chinese theatre – “Hang on”, I said, “that looks like Chow Yun Fat”. It was. Four films and eight hours later, having set a new personal best for amount of fu seen in a day, we staggered home, pausing only to leap in front of cars, fling each other out of windows and fly through the air in defiance of most of the laws of physics.

Despite clinging to every day with the enthusiasm of a drowning man to a liferaft, the final couple of days slid away like a handful of blancmange. We drifted back to Los Angeles and spent the final afternoon on the beach, which was almost deserted – so much for beach culture. Actually, I had been slightly disappointed with the cutie-pie quotient: while there were some stunners, I found teeth, tan & tits tended to tediousness after a while, though San Francisco’s Chinatown had me in a state of almost permanent dribble. I suspect it didn’t help that we managed to totally miss the weekends (two spent travelling, one at Animecon) – we did get to the beach, but it might have been the Gobi Desert for all the life on view, cute or otherwise.

Our journey home didn’t start well. We got to the airport in plenty of time and joined the queue to check in, only to find Ilsa, She-Wolf of the Departure Lounge there again, “organising” things. This meant the dumb jerks who turned up half an hour before their flight was due to leave, totally ignoring the two hours before flight check-in rule, got to go to the front of the queue. Now, a 16-hour flight would be sufficient to try the patience of a saint. The patience of a short-tempered, sarcasm-prone Scotsman was therefore no contest, especially after two weeks of nothing to whine about. I really hit my stride when we discovered our flight was cancelled. Even the “T.W.A. tea” jokes got the dust blown off them. However, they shifted us onto another flight to St.Louis (from where our plane was now starting) and even upgraded our seats from “Scummy, penny-pinching cheapo” to “flying on expenses, so who gives a damn” class. The major benefit of this was cuter hostesses.

The rest of the flight back wasn’t bad despite the efforts of a mother and brats in the next row to make it hell. The kids were just about bearable, it was the mother’s fondness for carrying out shouted conversations across the width of the plane that had me dreaming of a world where families on aircraft have a special place. Specifically, hanging just behind the engine, toasting gently like giant marsh-mallows.

Gatwick Airport, 8 am. Customs. My first trip through the red channel. You are permitted to take back a massive £32 of goods from America. I had somewhere over £500. Standing in the queue of people with something to declare, watching the person ahead getting thoroughly searched, I knew I was safe because I didn’t have anything dodgy in my luggage. (Well, not that dodgy – sub-sub-ed)

After getting through the red channel unscathed despite difficulty in signing the credit card slip because my hands were shaking, and a brief pause to sacrifice a couple of virgins to the Goddess-who-protects-from-Customs, it was back to Britain. There was nothing left of the holiday except a dose of jet-lag, which had me waking up at 3 am, and doing some ironing because I couldn’t sleep. It had been exhausting. It had been terminally destructive to my credit card. It had been the least restful holiday I’ve ever had. Yet within days of returning to the UK, I was certain that summer 1992 would see me once again travelling to the place where “bad” means “good”, and good is being about as weird as you can get!

Post-script – Six months on and life has almost returned to normal, save an inability to tolerate the concentrated muck that passes for orange juice here. But I get odd flashbacks, every now and again. Standing in Tower Records, holding a couple of American magazines, I suddenly found myself thinking “Damn! There’ll be 7.5% California state sales tax on top!”. While this may be true in their Los Angeles branch, it doesn’t apply to the one at Piccadilly Circus. But I can only assume the salesgirl had been on holiday too, as she casually added up the American cover prices and said to me, “That’ll be six dollars ninety please”…