Are you a mega-fan of anyone?

I was a massive fan of Bill Hicks when I was about 20. I ordered every single VHS tape, CD and T-shirt that his best friend Kevin Booth had available. It all arrived (just, the VHS tapes were half way out of the packaging when it turned up) along with some of the other comedians and such like that Kevin was doing stuff with at the time such as a pre-internet Alex Jones and others. I watched and listened to everything over and over and then invited friends round for viewings or brought the material round to their houses. A lot (in fact all) of that merchandise I sadly no longer have but I still have all the books ever written on Bill Hicks that I bought in the following years.

Shaun Ryder and the Happy Mondays is another. Anything to do with Shaun Ryder I have to read/listen/watch.

This obsessive quality even went as far as being friends on Facebook with Kevin Booth, Alex Jones, Bill Hick’s brother Steve and Paul Ryder (Shaun’s brother).

Remembering back to when the Internet first started becoming widely available it was RWD forum (where you could hang out and chat to all the Grime MCs) which blew me away so much. Pre-internet you could join a fan club by post but that was about it. With the arrival of the internet anyone could suddenly interact with all the people they were fans of. Obviously this is par for the course now but back then it was wild.

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