My best friend from there, Chris West, was at Oxford Poly and told me he was drumming in this 20s band - I was then working for Tate & Lyle Research, making detergent from sugar.
It was one of the best jobs I ever had - good bunch of people and actually quite interesting, making soap powder and stuff. Plus we worked a tough shift system - 12 hours at a time, seven day operation, alternating day and night shifts. So I was slightly jet-lagged all the time, but had plenty of free time at strange hours of the day. So I'd clock off shift at 7am or 7pm, get in my red MG Midget sports car, and head off to Oxford for adventures.
I think my first job in the Oxcentrics was 'roadie', which had few duties other than bluff my way into the gig, drink beer, chat to the ladies and get everyone dancing. I marvelled at Adrian Sheen's singing and stage announcements ("jazz-type rhythms", "don't stand on the tables or you'll damage the chairs."), and dreamed of one day having my own boater and being a rock star like him.
So it was a Turning Point in My Life when, due to pressure of his Finals (as I recall), I was invited to fill in for Adrian at some gigs.
I noticed immediately that an Oxcentrics set typically consisted of 12 numbers, of which only two had vocals, each of one verse. I was expected to fill in with chat between numbers "to allow the band to recover their lips" (or cover while the band had an argument over who had misread the parts due to drunkenness), plus find a way to keep myself busy during the instrumentals.
You will know by now that being ignored for long periods of time is not my way, so I found silly musical instruments, toys, props, water pistols - anything to keep myself the centre of attention during South Rampart Street Parade.
I had become Gorgeous Mike Vaseline.
The Vaseline is sort of to do with the gig at the Roebuck (immortalised in Jon Bowen's pictures) where I decided to slick down my hair with Vaseline. A mistake. Even the most powerful Tate & Lyle vehicle-cleaning detergents would not wash it out. I had to let it grow out in the end.
Then there was Coco. Coco had been the star of Chekhov's The Seagull, and now found itself part of the show, probably due to its vague resemblance to Mr Slater's Parrot (a Bonzo Dog Band character). Its head fell off eventually, but no matter. Coco is sadly with us no more, and received a decent burial around 1985.
The rest of my act (if that is what it can be called) was largely stolen from the Bonzo Dog and Bob Kerr's Whoopee Bands, with elements of progressive rock and Monty Python thrown in, looning around, dancing like a 20s flapper on amphetamines, interfacing with as many ladies as possible, drinking copiously and crashing out randomly at whoever would give me floor space.
If it was at Bullingdon Road, I was always mindful of the Bullingdon Road Point (the bizarre system they had to account for who consumed what), even artificially depressing its value by bringing 20 pounds of bootleg Tate and Lyle sugar (remember the shortage?) We had a two-ton hopper of the stuff at T&L. One ton disappeared..
I soon lost any initial embarrassment at not actually being part of the proper Oxford University thing (I had failed to get into Pembroke in 1971), as I was around so often that people assumed I was part of the infrastructure of the place. To this day I meet people who are convinced they saw me sitting Finals with them or, fully-gowned, eating with them at Top Table somewhere.
I had all the benefits of the Oxford Undergraduate experience (including the building of a very interesting network) without any of the academic work.
I now refer to it as one of the happiest times of my life - not a care in the world, plenty of fun, drink, good pals and interesting ladies, and I was in a top band!
It was Brideshead Revisited meets Spinal Tap.
Plus with Chris and a couple of good chaps called Graham Michelli and Mike Gould I was involved in a mobile disco called The Piglet Productions Roadshow, so I was gigging several times a week. Happy days!
And the memories!
Wild crazy gigs: the Commemoration Balls: playing with Gary Glitter at Christchurch, and getting twenty people into Magdalen College ball, one by one, from the Eastgate. Going on at 4am at Teddy Hall, pissed as a fart by then, but less pissed then the audience. May Morning, playing to all those people on Univ steps, while one of our lady supporters climbed up the building, then going punting.
Then there was playing Eights Week, on St John's Boat House roof, where I recall our fee was £5 between us, plus "all the Pimms we could drink". I could and did drink rather a lot of Pimms from the 45-gallon drum provided, and later staggered along the towpath to bump into one Sally Jones (with her mum), who I vaguely remembered having met.
She reminded me she was a tap-dancer, so the obvious thing to do was invite her to play at that evening's Beggars' Banquet at St John's. Sobering up later, I realised I ought to wander up to St Hugh's and explain that wasn't really possible, as I hadn't mentioned it to the rest of the band. Finding her in full 20s flapper gear, I was too embarrassed to refuse her, so along she came.
I called her onstage after about the third number and she totally upstaged me. The rest of my life has been a vain attempt to upstage her.One day, Sally Sparkle!
And the chaps in the band - what a solid crew!
Chris on drums, raising his boater at the Roebuck and elsewhere to reveal a clown's bald wig (strangely prescient!). Herbie laughing at all my jokes, regardless of humour content, so my act became 50% entertain audience, 50% get Herbie to corpse mid-number. Graham Downing, the Heavy Metal Banjo Player, with spats and a cigarette lighter. Paul St-John Smith, strong enough to put me on his shoulders for Tiger Rag, which maybe partly explained his consistent popularity with the ladies. Glyn Lewis and his band Dog Tooth Check, featuring Rick from the Warneford. Olly, with a twinkle in his eye, trying not to over-salivate as I deliberately ate lemons in front of him during his solos. And not forgetting Laura, the band's manager and Jewish Mother, always there to help, especially with a cup of tea late at night with an explanation as to why my attempts to impress the lady inhabitants of St Hugh's were probably doomed to failure...
Sadly absent from the reunion will be my girlfriend from the time, Carrie Tuke, otherwise 'Jelly'. I'm still in touch with her, and she's otherwise unchanged - a qualified Hellerwork practitioner.
The origin of her nickname was from a party we were all invited to (on the hope we would play, I think), where I noticed her tucking into the jelly from the buffet. "Do you like jelly?" was my opening gambit. When she politely admitted she did, I rendered a serious helping onto her bare midriff. Swiftly ejected from the party and later probably the only people banned from the Lamb and Flag for excessive use of jelly, the nickname stuck. She's long since dropped it, sensibly.
All good things must come to an end, and come the summer of 1977, most of the Oxcentrics were leaving Oxford, and I had somehow decided that a degree in Chemical Engineering at Bradford University was my personal way forward, so off I went...
As you probably know Olly and I resurrected the Oxcentrics in 1982 and expanded the line-up and repertoire, but that's another reunion/set of memories.
I'm still somewhere in Oxford, circa 1976, in that brilliantly hot summer, dancing on tables, leering hopefully at girls' chests, hoping they would fall out of ball gowns (I invented a 20s version of the punk dance 'the pogo' specifically for that purpose.), laughing like crazy, crashing out randomly in people's rooms and sneaking into a college for a hangover-cure Varsity brekker.
And the audiences we played to are now running UK plc and even the country. Kind of makes sense. I remember asking Benazir Bhutto if she had any floor space once. She said no.