Clare Teal: Tempo hots up in countdown to drummer’s nuptials

OUR drummer Benny is in a permanent state of flurry; he’s getting married in four weeks but still hasn’t got his suit sorted. I don’t know if the nerves are kicking in, but he dropped his knife and fork at least three times in Cambridge on Friday and butter-fingered a sticky spare rib to the carpet in Leatherhead on Saturday.

This behaviour is most out of character – drummers seldom drop things (other than the occasional beat) and can multi-task like you wouldn’t believe. For the last 12 months we’ve been running a sweepstake as to which of the four, Grant, Simon, Benny and Jimmy would get married first. On the afternoon of December 20 last year Benny rang to say: “Whoever had me down has won the jackpot.” Considering only Mud and myself were party to this sweepstake and both of us had earmarked Ben as the favourite there wasn’t much of a “pot”, but we blew the imaginary proceeds on a bottle to celebrate.

Regular readers of this column might remember Benny and Alice’s nightmare housing problems which started when the woman upstairs who owned the flat that they had lovingly decorated, decided that she’d actually quite like to live in it herself and asked them to move out.

After a frantic search in which they were twice gazumped, our heroes finally found another flat. Just as the piano was through the door, the woman upstairs (a different one) announced that although the chap they were planning to rent from owned the leasehold, she herself owned the freehold, hadn’t given her permission for this rental and didn’t intend to. All this happened hours before a four-day run at Ronnie Scotts.

Luckily, after an impassioned plea to the audience, a lovely couple stepped forward offering a perfect house in the perfect area. Throughout all that terrible stress Benny was his usual upbeat dependable self.

And so the countdown is on, we’re all looking forward to attending a wedding we’re not actually performing at for a change and to being the un-coordinated slightly inebriated types who come hurtling to the dance floor on hearing the opening bars of, I Will Survive – the types that we usually soberly tut at!