Robbie and the Language Barrier

I think he was secretly a lot better at French than he'd have us believe but it was more fun to be stupid.  He had plenty of other things to be a smug, over-confident, irritating smart-arse about.  Charlie's Mushrooms went to France many times to play.  The coastal bars of Le Havre, St Valery en Caux and Biarritz, the in-land towns of Lilles, Lery-Poses and probably some others I've forgotten all got a taste of our chaotic, funky jazz and at each one, Christophe negotiated free food and beer for the band.

Whatever Robbie's shortcomings with the French language, his mastery of the phrase "Encore bieres pour le group" (tr: more beer for the band) was undisputed.  We drank so much at gigs that whoever was road manager for us would have to spend the gig monitoring our beers and making sure that more were brought to us while we played.  If you're reminded of that scene in the Blues Brothers where they drank twice their fee in beer then you should consider that we made those guys look like lightweights.

If you've ever driven in France you'll be aware that the motorways there have toll booths every so often called "Péage".  One of the first times we were approaching one of these, only one of us spoke French well enough to communicate with the attendant.  Jizfanny - yes, that was his nickname.  Also Jizza.  His real name was Graham Baines but if you know Robbie at all, you'll know his nicknaming convention was to choose something the person would hate and make it stick if he could.

Jizfanny was our drummer.  We'd had a lot of drummers but Jizza was the one we considered everybody else was depping for.  And he spoke French.  We join the story with Jizza in his usual pitch, lunched out in a sleeping bag in the footwell of the rear row of seats in the van cab.  Our tour bus, such as it was, was a 20 year old Ford Transit the previous owner had put a second row of seats in before I bought it from him.

Robbie was in the front passenger seat by the window, which meant that he would be the one who had to speak to the peage attendant.  We drew up level and this guy wasn't taking any prisoners.  He was not prepared to speak more slowly because you were a guest in his country.  For the previous five minutes we'd been kicking Jizfanny and shouting at him to wake up cuz we needed his language skills.  Jizfanny had a policy of doing things in his own time, which usually meant the very last minute.  He had the same approach to drumming.  But once he was on the stool, he was awesome.  You just had to make sure he stayed there.

The attendant started jabbering numbers at Robbie, who said "Woah! Woah!  Parlez avec il.  Il parle francais."  Robbie thought he was saying "Woah Woah!  Speak with him.  He speaks French."

Jizfanny by this point had surfaced and as he pushed his head past Robbie to be able to see the attendant, with the smooth, dry sarcasm of any traffic policeman he said 'Well done, Robbie, that's "he used to speak French"' and instantaneously switched languages to speak to the attendant.

Later on, Christophe - the French guy whose idea it was for us to gig around France in the first place - had told Robbie he had to say some things at the end of the gig just to obey a bit of protocol.  It didn't sit particularly well with any of us but free beer and more money next time are pretty fair persuaders.  So Robbie learnt his words, "Ladies and gentlemen, it's been a pleasure to play for you this evening.  If you'd like a buy a cassette, please speak to our manager."

This is what actually came out of his mouth 5 hours and 20 beers later.

"Ladies and gentlemen, it is pleasure playing you.  If you want to buy cassettes, speak to the birdcage.  I eat the swimming pool!  Thank you!  Goodnight!"