Michael Mota: “At the time there was there was a gay pub in Clapham called - I swear I’m not making this up - The Claptrap. One of the bartenders was a young man called Johnny. I told him that I was putting a band together and asked if he knew any other boys who could sing and dance.”

Johnny: “I used to work at a gay bar called The Claptrap. One evening on my break I went to have a slash. I was standing at the urinal singing the chorus to Make Me A Higher Love (sic) when this chubby queen called Michael Mota wandered over and stood next to me. He looked me up and down and then asked if I knew any other good-looking boys who could sing.”

Keith: “ Vincent and I were working at a hair salon in Tooting called Dervishes. It was run by some nutter who had spent 10 years living in Korea and applied his knowledge of martial arts to the cutting and styling of hair. I had to undergo three months of Hapkido training before he would let me near a customer.”

Vincent: “Johnny used to come into Dervishes regularly. One day he told me that someone he knew was putting a boy band together. He asked Keith and I if we were interested in joining. Neither of us could play an instrument so we were both a bit sceptical. Johnny told us that it would be a piece of piss. All we had to do was sing and learn a few dance steps.”

Keith: “Our favourite customer at Dervishes was Scottish Tony. He had dropped out of an architecture apprenticeship and was working in the stock room at Safeways. He used to come into the salon with these mad sketches of hairstyles that he wanted us to create. None of the other stylists would go near him, but Vin and I saw it as a challenge. After we’d finished with our clients we’d sit Tony down and do our best to bring his crazy visions to life. The end result always involved copious amounts of hair gel and was usually propped up with cocktail sticks and clothes pegs.”

Vincent: “I told Johnny that Keith and I were up for being in the band if Tony could join as well.”

Michael Mota: "I booked some rehearsal space. Johnny came along with three of his mates. One of them - Tony - had his hair styled into the shape of a desert island, fringed with rolling blue and white surf. It looked completely ridiculous but he carried it off.

"We ran through three songs - Higher Love and a couple of others. I was surprised by how well it went. There was real chemistry between the boys. Up until then the band had been a speculative venture. Now, for the first time, I thought that I might actually have something worth developing.”

Johnny: “The rehearsals went really well. It felt completely natural.”

Micheal Mota: “Ever since my acrimonious departure from EMI, someone had been working very hard to make me a persona non grata within the industry. I heard a rumour that songwriters were being told that if they worked with me, they would never work again. This was a problem as I needed someone to write original material for the band to perform. I casually broached the subject with the boys. Vincent said he knew someone who wrote songs. It was ‘any port in a storm’ time, so I reluctantly agreed to listen to a demo.”

Vincent: “Simon was an old friend from school. He worked as a filing clerk in his father’s accountancy firm, but he also had a sideline writing advertising jingles for a local radio station. He was a really good musician. He even designed his own instruments.”

Michael Mota: “Vincent played me a demo tape of Simon’s music. It had idiot savant written all over it.”

Vincent: "Simon came from a very strict family. He was very keen to join the band but said that he would need to get permission from his parents first.”

Michael Mota: “It took me a month to win over Simon’s parents. I did everything bar getting down on one knee and asking them for their son’s hand in marriage. Eventually I made a breakthrough in our telephone negotiations and received a formal invitation to attend Sunday dinner.”

Vincent: “Every week Simon used to record a fake radio show in his bedroom. He called it Muscle FM. It was basically him putting on a DJ voice and playing some 12 inch vinyl. He recorded each show onto a C90 cassette. On Sunday he used to play these tapes to his family while they ate dinner.”

Michael Mota: “One Sunday afternoon I found myself sitting in a gloomy, oak-panelled dining room. Simon’s family were straight out of Victorian England. His sister, Laura, sat bolt upright next to me, looking straight ahead with her lips pursed. After I arrived there was a very awkward silence, during which she briefly rested her hand on my lap. I thought to myself: ‘Oh god this isn’t going to work’.

“Eventually Simon wandered in wearing a tight T-shirt and a pair of ridiculously small, red satin shorts. He put a gigantic radio-cassette player down on the serving trolley and pressed play. A butch voice filled the room telling us all to 'Keep it tuned to Muscle.FM'. It was the gayest thing I’d heard in my life!”

Vincent: “Michael was sitting across the table from me mouthing: ‘What the fuck?’ I think he thought that it was all some big practical joke.”

Michael Mota: “I sat there eating roast beef and Yorkshire pudding, with Muscle.FM in one ear, and Simon’s father’s mediations on Conservative party policy in the other. When the tape stopped his mother took advantage of the silence to makes a serious enquiry into the status of her daughter’s virginity. I remember her saying:

‘You really need to try and lose it before you turn 20, otherwise there will be all kinds of medical problems that will affect you later in life...’”

Vincent: “Michael was having a very hard time keeping a straight face.”

Michael Mota: “I went to the bathroom to powder my nose. I was laughing so hard my gak went everywhere.”

Simon: “My father seemed to quite like Michael. My mother complained that he’d spilled some talcum powder on floor of the downstairs bathroom and that it had left a mark on the rug.”

Vincent: “Simon called me the next day. He said that his parents were happy for him to join the band.”

Michael Mota: “After Simon joined I sat everyone down and explained that the band would be a serious commitment. I would bankroll any costs in the early stages, but I would recoup my losses later if they were successful. Apparently the bit about me being paid back didn’t sink in.”

Johnny: “We were rehearsing almost every night of the week. Simon didn’t have a clue how to dance and we had to work around his limitations. It was frustrating for all of us, but especially for me since I had done a bit of professional choreography. I felt like he was holding me back.”

Michael Mota: “Simon was a terrible dancer. If it wasn’t for his songs I would have sent him packing back to Muscle.FM. Eventually we worked out an act where the boys would perform as a quartet, centre stage, while Simon would stand slightly off to one side, performing a less demanding routine. At the time it made sense since, of the five, he had the strongest and most versatile voice. Looking back at the videos now, he resembles an ultra-camp version of those people you see standing in the corner of the television screen doing the deaf and dumb sign language.”

Johnny: “One afternoon Michael told us that we needed to discuss our image. We spent the next three hours arguing over a name for the group.”

Michael Mota: “The boys had all these fucking absurd ideas for band names. Johnny wanted them to be called The Claptraps after the bar where we had met! I thought he was joking at first. The only sensible suggestion came from Keith. In the interests of diplomacy I wrote each name down on a piece of paper and pretended to draw one out at random from a coffee cup. Of course I knew full well which name was going to be picked.”

Keith: “I nearly died from meningitis when was 10 years old. When I recovered the only thing I would eat was Scotch Eggs. Eventually I ate so many that the dye in the breadcrumbs turned my skin orange. After that my parents weaned me back onto other foods and I was only allowed to have eggs on Friday.”

Vincent: “Egg Friday was a code word that Keith and I used when we worked at Dervishes. It’s about that feeling of anticipation you get before going out on the town - that imminent release of all the energy you’ve stored-up during the week.”

Michael Mota: Egg Friday sounds like it might be alluding to something dirty. In reality it was Keith’s expression of the childhood joy that he got from being allowed to eat eggs on a Friday.”

NEXT: The Rise and Fall of 'Johnny Eggy.'

Looking forward to the next instalment.

dot, dot, dot

Michael Mota: “I excused Simon from band rehearsals in the vain hope that he might write some songs that would be hits. A week later he presented me with a demo tape.”

Simon “I had a program on my IBM called ‘Speech Wizard X’ that was a cross between a sampler and voice recognition software. It would emulate a 10 second audio file and then play it back to you on a virtual keyboard.

"I remember it being really tedious to use: Downloading music onto the hard drive and then converting it to a format that the software could read took absolutely ages. Plus it was completely tone deaf and mangled whatever was fed into it beyond all recognition. The songs on the first Egg Friday album were all based on a Motown hits compilation*painstakingly filtered through the sampler and then reconstructed on my parent’s piano. Michael and I wrote the lyrics together.”

(* Motown later sued for breach of copyright. The case was thrown out on the grounds that the melodies bore no resemblance to the alleged source material).

Michael Mota: “Simon’s very good when he’s writing to order. If you don’t give him a clear idea of what you want subject-wise, you’ll get a song about whatever happens to be preoccupying him at the time – The possible solution to nine down in The Daily Telegraph crossword, or his sister Laura’s habit of borrowing his clothes without asking...”

Johnny: “The music that Simon music wrote for Egg Friday is incredibly undervalued. From a dancer’s perspective, if you strip away the melody, underneath it’s really glitchy and multifaceted; it gives you a lot freedom when it comes to interpreting the rhythm. This is going to sound incredibly precious, but I think that to really understand the music of Egg Friday you needed to see us dancing to it.”

January 1987: the band enters the studio and records what will be their first single.

Micahel Mota: “In the benevolent dictatorship that I will one day establish in the UK, all bands will be required to release an eponymous debut single that acts as their manifesto. When they are deemed to have strayed too far from this opening statement they will be required by law to break up.

“Right from the word go, I was adamant that the first Egg Friday single would be named after the group.”

Vincent: “The 12 inch version of Egg Friday was beyond epic –nothing less than the boy band Bohemian Rhapsody. It’s without a doubt the best thing we ever did.”

Keith: “One of my fondest memories of Tony was sitting in the recording studio watching him working out how to play Egg Friday on an acoustic guitar. He made it sound like an early 20th century blues song. We were all quite taken aback: Here was a really sweet, innocent guy, performing what we thought was a happy piece of psychedelic pop with an air of hushed menace. In hindsight there were some dark undertones in Simon’s lyrics and Tony brought them to the surface.”

Micahel Mota: “I pressed 100 copies of Egg Friday and hand delivered them to radio stations. Most of the people I spoke to were still under the impression that I worked for EMI so it wasn’t hard to get airplay. The public response was immediate. People were phoning in asking where they could buy the song. Record shops started calling me and trying to place advance orders. I used what was left of my savings to fund a full pressing.”

Vincent: “Egg Friday was getting a lot of radio play. It was surreal. We were on the cusp of stardom but no one knew who we were. We all still had regular jobs."

Keith: “One evening at rehearsals Michael told us that we were at number 25 in the midweek singles charts. He said that we would probably be asked to perform on Top of the Pops in the near future. The next day we all went down to Camden market and bought leather jackets.”

Michael Mota: “Egg Friday debuted at number 20 in the singles chart. That was when going in number 20 still meant something. A week later it had reached the top 10. It eventually stalled at number two, held off the top spot by Ferry Aid.”

Johnny: “Michael often said the only thing that would stop Egg Friday from reaching number one would be an act of God. In fact it was an act of corporate negligence and the awful charity single it inspired that put paid to our chart-topping ambitions.

“It’s possible that we could have held off individual challenges from Nik Kershaw, Jaki Graham and Paul King, but when three legends like that come together on the same record - there was no answer to that.”

I bought several copies of Ferry Aid now. Where did I put my copy of the Egg Friday 12"...?

Marvellous.

Is there a causal link, or at least some kind of slender connection, between Egg Friday and Alain Robbe-Grillet's much-misunderstood multimedia experiment Le vendredi de l'oeuf, or did two great minds just happen to think alike?

everyday...

The year is 1987: Egg Friday are a hastily assembled boy band, brought together by their manger’s vision of a gay Osmonds. In fact only one of their line-up - Johnny - is openly gay. The remainder of the group comprises a pair of avant-garde hairdressers, the wide-eyed man-child who is the willing subject of their tonsorial experiments, and an autistic mummy’s boy (also the band’s songwriter) who combines a flamboyant dress sense with the personality of an accountant. By filtering Motown songs through some dodgy speech emulation software they have created a seven-minute, eponymously-titled slice of psychedelic pop that has reached number two in the UK singles charts...

Vincent: “Out of the blue Michael announced that we were going to sign a record deal with ___.”

Johnny: “A black stretch limo picked us up at our homes. The lane where Tony was living was so narrow that the car had to park at the far end. The chauffeur went to fetch him. Either by accident or design he child-locked the passenger doors so we couldn’t get out. Of course Tony wasn’t ready. We ended up waiting for an hour in the limo, all the while getting more and more drunk.”

Vincent: “On the way to the record company offices our car joined the tail end of a funeral procession. If I hadn’t been so catastrophically wasted I might have taken it as an omen.”

Johnny: “In the boardroom they had laid out the pages of our contract on a long table. We walked from one end to the other adding our signatures. At the far end of the room there was another table with a large ice bucket containing several bottles of champagne. One of the bottles proved to be a bit volatile. The eruption of Dom Pérignon smudged mine and Vincent’s names on one of the pages. We couldn’t have known at the time, but it was the luckiest break we had that day.”

Keith: “Simon and Michael went into another room and signed a separate deal related to song writing. It’s the reason they’re both multi-millionaires and I’m not.”

Michael Mota (Manager): “This part of the Egg Friday story needs to be put into context: The band had released a very successful single. They had an album that was in the final mixing stages. But they were still spending more money than they were making. Believe me I would have liked nothing more than to insulate the boys from the heinous, all consuming bastardry of a major label. The reality was that the coffers were empty and they needed a backer. It felt like poetic justice negotiating a deal with ___. Simon and I signed a separate publishing deal. That was where the money was.”

Trevor Stone (Head of A&R, ___ Records:) “A couple of days before we signed Egg Friday, we met with Michael. He asked us to imagine a situation where the company could sell music made in a parallel universe. Of course we all thought he was on drugs.

Then he walked us through the creation of the Egg Friday single. He got Simon to demonstrate the computer software. We saw how Jimmy Mack by Martha and the Vandellas had been transformed into something that was unrecognisable, but equally brilliant.

Michael said: ‘Now imagine if we did that with your entire back catalogue’. That was the point when the penny dropped. We realised that we were all going to be very rich.”

Michael Mota: “Someone at ___ managed to pull some strings at NEAD laboratories where they used to process the data from the Ullman particle accelerator. For three hours every week they turned over one of their super computers to Simon’s shitty Speech Wizard X software so that we could begin work on reconfiguring ___’s back catalogue."

Simon: “___ put me in charge of what eventually became their Mirror Image division. In hindsight I enjoyed this work more than being in the band, which to be honest I always found a bit of a nuisance.”

Michael Mota: “In addition to their trade in recorded music and the souls of those who create it, ___ also possessed an extensive property portfolio. Among these holdings were a number of flats and houses called ‘popovers.’ Some of these were used as venues for interviews and record company hospitality. The more lavish popovers were reserved as accommodation for popular acts that were signed to the label. I had long since abandoned any notions I had of creating a gay Osmonds. I wanted Egg Friday to be a British version of The Monkees, all living together under one roof. I was determined to get them a popover of their own.

There was a degree of urgency to my plan, since by this time Tony was more or less transient. He had a puppy-dog charm that would make people want to take him into their homes. After a few weeks they’d get fed up with him and he would be asked to leave. The boy was incapable of looking after himself. If I hadn’t intervened he would have been living on the street.”

Johnny: “Michael arranged for us to all move into a mansion in Kensington. It was owned by the record company. When our car pulled-up outside I was surprised to see Ambrose - a new romantic pop star from the early 80s - sitting on the pavement in a tide of Victorian furniture. On the way up to the house I accidentally brushed past him. He looked at me and said: “Enjoy it while it lasts, Primrose.”

It wasn’t until later that I realised he had been dropped by the label. They had evicted him so that we could move in.”

Keith: “A few hours later Ambrose picked up an antique lamp stand and a box of clothes and wandered off down the street. After he was gone people started coming out of their houses and taking bits and pieces of furniture. Eventually a couple of men loaded what was left into the back of a truck and drove away. It was very sad.”

Vincent: “I ended up in what must have been Ambrose’s bedroom. He had scrawled pretentious slogans all over the walls and ceiling in luminous ink. You couldn’t see it in daylight. I lay in bed that night lying staring up at the words: ‘Jewel thy tonsillitis.’”

Johnny: “I remember Michael leading me to the door of my room and saying: ‘Johnny, I think you’re going to have a lot of fun in here.’ He opened the door and there in front of me was this giant bed. It was normal length, but about 15 feet wide. I stared at it in awe, wondering how many people I could fit in there at once. The answer I later found out is 23. I had to write to an address in Paris whenever I wanted new sheets for it.”

Keith: “There was a forest in the basement. I’m not joking. There were actual trees growing out of the foundations. One a month a man would come around and prune the branches.”

Colin Gray (Metropolitan Forestry Board): “Dungeon Yew is one of three species of subterranean tree indigenous to the London area. It grows exclusively underground without the need for natural light. The root systems are essential in strengthening the foundations of buildings. What would happen if all the trees died? Well since they effectively hold a large part of the capital together, the city would probably start to collapse in on itself.”

The year is 1987: Egg Friday are an up and coming Boy Band whose songs are composed on the super computer, ordinarily used to process the data from the Ullman Particle Accelerator. Following a number two hit single they have signed a deal with a major label and moved into a mansion owned by their record company. There is a small forest growing in the basement.

Michael Mota: “When Egg Friday signed with ___ , the debut album was already recorded and was more or less mixed. One of the conditions of the contract was that the label had to release the record within 40 days. That meant that we had to pack a month’s worth of press and promotion into a week. Having given this matter careful consideration I decided that the most prudent course of action would be a series of brash publicity stunts.”

Keith: “Michael forbade us from talking to the press. He said that doing so would interfere with his carefully devised media strategy.”

Johnny: “One evening we were all drinking in a dive called the The Carved Owl. Michael saw me having a conversation with someone at the bar and went berserk - pushed the guy away and told him to “fuck off.” I put myself between the pair of them because it looked like it was going to kick off. Michael was screaming at me: “I told you not to speak to the press!” Everyone around him took a couple of steps backwards. The truth is I didn’t know who I was talking to. To me it was just some guy.”

Vincent: “Michael generally comes across as a bit of an old queen. He can be quite a scary bloke when he’s angry.”

Michael Mota: “There was a lot of mystique surrounding Egg Friday. I had received numerous requests for interviews with the band so I decided to turn it into a bit of a competition. Simon and I spent a couple of days devising an Easter egg hunt around London. The first hack to solve all clues and find the band would bag the debut interview.”

Johnny: “Michael and Simon spent practically an entire weekend sitting in the kitchen of our house, giggling like a pair of schoolgirls, while they devised clues for the treasure hunt.”

Vincent: “One Friday morning Michael drove us all to the edge of Hampstead heath. He waited in the car while his minder – this big North London bruiser called Derek - frogmarched us to a remote park bench. He tied a pair of Egg Friday balloons to the armrest and instructed us all to wait there until someone from the press turned up.”

Simon: “As soon as Derek had gone, Johnny and Tony began to interrogate me on how long I thought it would be before a member of the press found us. I told them that we would probably be waiting a minimum of six hours, since the clues we had devised were quite challenging.”

Colin Grey (Smash Hits magazine): “My first proper assignment for Smash Hits came in the form of a clue in the Egg Friday treasure hunt. Before I left the office it was made very clear to me that if I failed to secure the interview, the editor would have my nuts on a plate.”

Lynn Hargreaves (Eighties Magazine): “As a reluctant participant in the great Egg Friday treasure hunt, I received a piece of pink paper in the mail informing me that the next clue could be found tied to a balloon near the elephant house at London Zoo. The balloon in question turned out to be in the hands of a child actor who had been instructed to scream bloody murder if any strange women approached him.”

Nigel Sutton (NME): “Certainly in my case the clues were personalised and quite vindictive. The first one, which was sent to me through the post, simply read: “Nigel darling. I have left the next clue with your ex-wife. Fondest regards - Michael.” It wasn’t so much a treasure hunt as a trial by fire.”

Colin Grey: “With the fate of my family jewels still hanging in the balance, I found myself in the backroom of a private club in Soho, retrieving a clue card from between legs of a stripper. I was a late blooming 19 year old, who up until that time had never laid eyes on an actual vagina. It was a very traumatic initiation into the world of women.”

Vincent: “We waited on the heath for about half an hour. When it started to drizzle, Tony became very concerned about his hair. We decided that we should repair to a nearby cafe.”

Colin Grey: “Finally, at 7 o’clock in the evening I arrived at some remote part of Hampstead Heath to find an empty bench with a pair of forlorn looking Egg Friday balloons tied to one of the armrests. The band had clearly buggered off hours ago. I walked to a nearby phone box and telephoned the band’s manager - Michael Mota, who told me that they were probably in the pub.”

Johnny: “The Regatta in Highgate used to be brilliantly rowdy. Unfortunately it was taken over by a chain a few years ago. The original building is made from the wreckage of a pair of galleons that collided in the Thames. They literally carted them uphill and set up a pub inside the wreckage. Over the years bits and pieces from other ships have been added to it. By the time one of the journalists tracked us down, we were all completely wasted. While he attempted to explain to us that his testicles were on the line if he didn’t come back with an interview, Keith and Vincent sat there laughing at him.”

Colin Grey: “I eventually tracked the band down to a pub called The Regatta. They were all absolutely hammered. Tony had these very long russet hair extensions. The tips had been sculpted into the life-sized head of a fox. He wore this wrapped around his neck like a fur stole. Girls kept coming over to pet it.”

Michael Mota: “My other big idea was the press day at the Knowles Wood army assault course. It’s known in military circles as Manhood Moor. The Royal Marines train there. The whole exercise was an excuse to get the band dressed up in military uniforms. It was also an opportunity to exact revenge on some journalists who had crossed me in the past and who I knew were overweight and would struggle. I presented a very generous cheque for veterans of the Falklands War to the commanding officer and told him to go easy on the boys, but to make the life of anyone with a press pass a living hell.”

Johnny: “I remember sitting on top of a 20 foot wall that I had just scaled, smoking a cigarette, while an endless procession of soldiers charged past. About 15 minutes later Simon came staggering along, running like a girl, with his jacket wide open and sweat pouring off of him.”

Simon: “I was the only member of the band to complete the course. I did it in a respectable one hour and 37 minutes.”

Michael Mota: “I took great pleasure in watching Neil Parkes from the Melody Maker get so bogged down in a mud pit that he didn’t even have the energy to stand up and looked like he might drown. It’s telling that none of his colleagues in the media lifted a finger to help him.”

Keith: “There was a partially submerged drainage pipe that you had to crawl through. Tony banged his forehead on the edge as he went in. He came out the other side with blood streaming down his face and was rushed off to the infirmary.”

James Beaumont (formerly Sergeant Beaumont): “One of the band sustained a minor cut to his forehead. He was taken to the infirmary which at the time was located in an old World War II bunker. When he arrived there he was a bit disoriented. I explained to him what had happened and where we were. One of the things he asked me was whether we had any underground trees on the site. After his injury had been seen to, I showed him the Arcadian Oaks that had been growing in another part of the bunker since the late 1940s. He was really interested in them and asked if he could take a few of the acorns home with him. He seemed like a nice chap. What happened to him was terribly sad.”

Keith: “Tony changed after his accident.”

Johnny: “When Tony’s injury healed he was left with a tiny scar on his forehead. It was barely visible – you would have to be standing a couple of feet away from him under a very bright light, to even know that it was there. It seemed to both horrify and fascinate him. Once I wandered past his room. He was standing in front of his mirrored wardrobe, rubbing the scar with the tip of his finger, as if he was trying to erase it.”

Vincent: “Tony had led a much harder life than the rest of us. He had a difficult childhood in Glasgow and had been homeless for short periods. Through a combination of charm and good luck he had emerged from these traumatic circumstances completely unscathed. I think the accident on Manhood Moor was the first time that anything had left a mark on him. It's fair to say that the experience rattled him. That tiny cut set off a chain of events that eventually led to his death.

get a fried egg on toast like that?

Bollocks to Quentin T. I can see Disney & Dreamworks fighting over this.

Egg Friday: 3D in HD on DVD. Followed by the stage musical tour.