Simply The Red: a bonus chapter from my book Alternatives To Valium: How Punk Rock Saved A Shy Boy's Life

I am sent to review Simply Red at the Aberdeen Exhibition Centre. This is not glamorous work. The Aberdeen Exhibition Centre is nobody’s idea of a good time. It is a shed, and Simply Red are very popular. Normal people like them. It is a disgrace.

I have to stay overnight. I check into a sad hotel by the railway station. I leave my flowery toilet bag and a bar of chocolate in the room. It is my breakfast. 

The concert is easy to criticise and hard to understand. I have a go, scribbling notes about how it sounds like an interior design magazine, with funk hairdressing and swimming pool reggae, because Simply Red are a fusion wedding band playing soul in a jazzy shirt. 

There are some odd bits. The singer, Mick Hucknall, starts the show with his hair scraped into a ponytail. He wears a shirt like a rare skin complaint. I disguise with insults my inability to decode Mick Hucknall’s popularity. He is a malnourished Tinkerbell, a cocktail waiter. Then there is the bit where Mick Hucknall shakes his hair loose from its binding, prompting a tangible waft of sexual release. It comes out as a sigh, then a scream. 

To be fair to Mick Hucknall - though I do not at the time view this to be my job - the show includes heavy imagery. There is a song called Wonderland, which is illustrated with projections of Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan, slides of the Berlin Wall and phallic rockets. If Simply Red were on Rough Trade, with an audience of hundreds, these would be bold subversions, seen by nobody. Because Simply Red are very popular, they are derided. I am that critic. 

The show ends. There are no taxis in hell, so I walk the several miles to the terrible hotel by the station. When I get to my room,  the key does not work. The door will not open. There is no one on the reception desk. I try to force the lock.

The door opens suddenly. A bastard in underpants stares at me. He is angry and defiant. 

“You’re in my room,” I say. 

“It’s my room,” he replies. 

“But look,” I say. “That’s my toilet bag.” 

“I wondered about that,” the man says, climbing back into bed. 

The spring mechanism on the hinge jolts into life and the door slams in my face. I hear a muffled shout from inside the room. “Oh yeah,” the man says, “I ate your Yorkie.”