What Planet Am I On? Read Online Free Page A

and directed The Grape Tapes , a film about Black Grape, is the same. Too Nice Tom is another geezer who has a very inquisitive mind, and me and him could sit there all day talking and debating about all kinds of things.
    I began to investigate more for myself when I started using the internet and sites like YouTube over the last few years. I only became internet friendly, or computer-literate I suppose would be the proper term for it, about four years ago. I never had a bloody computer until Iwas forty-five. They didn’t exist when we were kids, obviously. The first arcades had started coming out that had Space Invaders and Pac Man and that, but not home computers. Then when I was in a band for twenty years, touring the world, I never really needed a computer. When you’re in a band you have a tour manager who organizes everything for you and basically runs your life. You don’t need to be going on the internet and checking your flight times or anything. All we needed to do was try to be in hotel reception for whatever time and a car would be there to pick us up.
    I remember way back in 1995, when the first Black Grape album came out, me and Kermit had to go down to London and do a load of press interviews and stuff. That was the first time we had to do any press involving the internet. One of the things that we had to do was record one of the first podcasts. I don’t think the word podcast had even been invented then, but that’s basically what it was, an interview with some geezer that was only put out online, so I suppose it was one of the first podcasts, even if some trendy marketing genius hadn’t come up with the actual term yet. The other thing we had to do was a question-and-answer session online with some fans. Some techie guy set us up online and the first thing me and Kermit thought was, ‘Bingo, let’s talk to girls. Where are the girls?’
    I first started to use the internet by myself when I got a phone that had access to the internet on it. This was probably about 2004. At first I just used it for texting.It took me a little while to get up to speed with that. I remember being on tour with the Mondays in 2006 in the States and we got stopped by the cops, just a routine check, and this cop smacked me on the hand with his truncheon because I was stood there in front of him with my phone in my hand, texting. I couldn’t believe it, the cheeky bastard. For once I knew I hadn’t even done anything wrong. But the Americans were slower than us to get on to the texting lark, so this cop didn’t even know what texting was. I said, ‘Ow, what the fuck are you doing you dick ? I’m just texting!’ He just saw me with my hand in front of my pants, fiddling around with something, and he made some ridiculous remark about my ‘lewd behaviour’. Fuck knows what he thought I was up to but I got a fucking smack on the hand with a truncheon. Nice one. But I’ve learnt over the years with American cops that their interpretation of what’s going on is more important than what is actually happening. It might look to everyone else like you’re not doing anything wrong, but if the cop that’s in your face interprets it a different way, then you’d better watch out.
    After I got the hang of texting, a bit later someone showed me how you could go online, so I started using YouTube and stuff. Then someone showed me how you could use Google to look something up – just type in a name or something and it would show you all the results – and then a bit after that I got a computer at home.
    I’m not on Facebook or Twitter or any of that nonsense, though. I can’t be doing with all the socialmedia gear. Why would you want to be telling the whole world your personal business like that? You must be crazy to do that. My privacy gets invaded enough, thank you very much. I don’t mind doing all the press and TV that comes with the job – in fact, I quite enjoy a lot of it – but the last thing I can imagine doing is