chas
Your Dad’s Dead M
Y good old friend Chas Ambler died a few weeks back. He was, for the best part of twenty years my partner-in-crime in top light entertainment duo, Your Dad. We played a lot in Presteigne, over the years, from our Bad Taste nights at the Hat Shop, through countless Sheep Musics, to our legendary recital of Bohemian Rhapsody at the Assembly Rooms, which came close to culminating in a riot. We played all over the UK, in bars, in theatres, in comedy clubs, at festivals. Once, I got punched. Once, we were threatened with death at a biker’s festival outside Wrexham. Once, Richard Hawley came up to us after a gig in Sheffield, and told us we were the best thing he’d seen in years, and that next time we played in Sheffield, he’d bring Jarvis. We never got another gig in Sheffield, needless to say. That we could always get a gig in Presteigne was due to the support of the Editor of this esteemed organ, whose musical collaboration with Chas goes back to before the dawn of time. Chas was one of the original members of Presteigne legends The Tango Band, and he went on the tour of Germany and Czechoslovakia where the band discovered Jan (Honza) Hruby. Pete conceived the idea of getting Honza to play in Presteigne, and thought he’d put on a little festival to make this happen. He called the festival Sheep Music. Chas played at that first festival, and I doubt he missed a one. Chas was a cantankerous old sod. He could be rude and thoughtless; and was funny enough to get away with it, if only just. He said to me once, ‘I’ve always been rude, and I will always BE rude.’ And he always was rude. Part of my job in Your Dad was to follow in his wake, apologising to organisers and sound guys, and I loved it all. We had nothing but great times, the rude old sod and I. I shall always miss him. I loved him, and I told him so. I loved his patience and kindness with me; loved his talent and passion for music; loved the laughs and scrapes we shared over nearly twenty years of working together. Above all, I just loved his company. The gigs were great, but they were always book-ended by long conversations in the van. We talked. A lot. We talked about politics, and music and love, and religion; and we talked about showbiz. Chas’s family have a history of working in show business which stretches back to the 1860’s; the novelist Eric Ambler was a distant cousin. Chas grew up in theatres, on bandstands, and at the end of the pier, and he told great stories about this extraordinary heritage. This is one of the many reasons he was so proud of his son Ben, who is following in this tradition. Chas died of oesophageal cancer within a year of being diagnosed. He died in a house in the beautiful Lancashire port village of Glasson Dock, nursed by friends. I was there on the night he died, and so was his son. He died as the tide in Morecambe Bay turned from flood to ebb. We held a wake ten days later, high in the Tatham Fells above Lancaster. His coffin stayed on stage as musicians from all over the country came to play
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in tribute; including our beloved Editor. As I said in my introduction to the event, ‘Chas has often died on stage; and I know, because I’ve been with him. But this is the first time he’s been dead on stage.’ We buried him in the same place the following afternoon. Makes a chap think, of course it does. The BBC are running a series on Artificial Intelligence, and tonight I watched a short film about trans humanists – people who think we can live forever as cyborgs, or inside servers. People too, who say that ageing is a disease which can be cured. People who would like to live forever. And, I must say, all of them men with terrible haircuts. These people didn’t seem to have given the matter much consideration. They just want to live forever. They think that’s a good thing. But grief is the price we pay for joy, and joy is its reward. To abolish the grief that comes with the death of someone close, we need to feel joy, at a birth, at a marriage, at the renewal of life, at the promise of hope. We are made from dead stars. I hope those people are wrong, and that humans will never be stupid enough to abolish death, and with it, change. Chas, my dear old friend, had a beautiful death. I wish one for myself, come the day. Ian Marchant
On Being An Unprotected Animal on The Endangered List I am a ‘game’ species (good to shoot) and a ‘pest’ species (nibble tasty crops). 300,000-400,000 of us are killed annually, mostly on ‘shoots’. There is no closed-season so many of us are pregnant or nursing when killed. There are also approximately 100 registered packs of hounds which specifically hunt for us.
I am a Hare.