A FAVOUR?

One of my personal hilarious moments was when one of the lads in our Chesterfield Soulies group did a favour for Richard Searling, circa 79/80. I can't remember the lads name now so I shall call him Fred. Fred and the other lads in the group, were big, big fans of Searling.

Fred worked in a garage and could get car number plates created cheaply. I think he noticed that Searling's car number plate was broken so, being the understandable sycophant that he was, he offered to replace it for him FOC. Searling, naturally, accepted the offer.

So we get to the following Saturday night, we are at someone's house waiting for everyone to gather to figure out who is going in what car to Wigan. Time was passing by and we were starting to get very worried as t Fred and gang were missing and we didn't want to leave without them. They eventually turned up, looking rather stressed but laughing and told us this story.

It turned out that they had raced a 'white' car from a set of traffic lights in the middle of Chesterfield and had beaten it. For reasons best known to themselves, they brandished Searling's number plate out of the back window to the defeated 'white' car in triumph.

At that moment the white car turned on it's blue flashing light and pulled them up. Oh bugger! The policeman was curious why someone in the car was brandishing a number plate that was completely different to the one that was on the car they were travelling in... "being a Saturday night and all sir..."

Fred explained that he worked in a garage and he had done a 'friend' a favour. "So who is this friend then sir?" came the obvious question. Fred explained that it was Richard Searling who worked at RCA Records. "But sir", explained the policeman, "This number plate belongs to a blue 'blah blah' car in Birmingham, I don't think you are being completely honest with us now laddie!"

Fred starts to bluster "but, but... it is!" The police requested to look in the boot of their car. Unfortunately the boot is filled will all sorts of car paraphernalia which, in the wrong hands, could be used for all sorts of car stealing activity, and this, along with the car number plate made PC Plod rather suspicious!

After much anguish from Fred and friends trying to figure out what the heck has gone wrong... even to the point of considering that their hero was driving a stolen car it suddenly dawned on Fred that he might have got the number plate printing wrong. So after spending ten minutes doing a 'Countdown conundrum' with the PC Plod checking every number they came up with they eventually heard the magic sound over the radio saying that the car belonged to RAC Records...

After they had finished telling us this story we all had tears of laughter running down our faces and we couldn't move for ages due to our aching sides. We eventually got to the Casino in time for Searling's Spot and Fred rushed up to tell his hero what had happened but his hero was too busy to talk and all Fred got for his troubles was a perfunctory nod of the head and a 'yeah OK, next week will be fine'

Thus teaching the now subdued Fred, and everyone else in the group, a valuable lesson in life of idolising people and the inherent problems of doing so.

Thanks for letting me share :)

Wendy Jervis