Popstars of the apocalypse Act 1 Scene 1

Popstars of the apocalypse

Act 1 Scene 1

‘Stankos’ bar Whitechapel high-street, a music venue and bar in one of thefasjionably  unfashionable, kebab grease stained suburbs of Shoreditch. An area known primarily for the presence of a Burger Monster restaurant, a 24 hour off-licence and conveniently placed Accident and Emergency department of a major London Hospital.  It is rumoured that the remains of Joseph Merrick ‘The Elephant Man’ are to be found somewhere within the inner recesses of the hospital, rumour also suggests however that these remains now actually form part of the estate of the late Michael Jackson. Regardless, this fact is not essential to the development of this play and perhaps undue focus on it may detract from the story itself.

It’s late afternoon in mid-summer in London, outside people stroll passed with bellies hanging out looking for some kind of party atmosphere between the cars and dustbins of a London street.  Inside the bar, through the smoked glass, on comfortable brown sofas humans aresipping tall straight glasses of expensive but mediocre Czech lager. The mood is designer shambolic. Hair is unkempt and clothes are torn despite being bought new earlier this week; their hair tends to be  professionally untidied and matted with bio-reverberative hair-grease at the Doghouse, an avant-guard hair salon where prospective customers must undergo a thorough vetting based on the prominence of their cheekbones and the originality of their footwear. The trendy ‘look’ this month is ‘wealthy tramp’.

A sign outside the newsagents next-door to Stankos relates the recent sudden disappearance of a famous record producer from his London flat in the following terms: ‘Top-Ten Top-Man Gone!

Crew (who is actually only one person), Steve and Philipo known as ‘Felatio’ are lolling together on a brown sofa. Crew has no shoes on.

Steve: Are you going for that Bilbo chic now Crew?

Crew: eh?

Steve: What happened to your shoes? Why haven’t you got any shoes?

Crew: I needed a haircut. Went round the doghouse in a pair of DM’s.

Steve: Not original enough?

Crew: Well I’d just got out of bed, so I had to jettison ‘em.

Felatio: Peace!

 Crew: Went in bare-foot! Quite original, so Poppy cut my hair.

Steve: But why do you go to Doghouse anyway? You always get a number one.

Crew:  Yeah but I know I paid 50 quid for it.

Felatio: That’s a pretty expensive baldhead dude!

Crew: Worth it doh.

Steve reaches over and picks up the newspaper and starts to read.

Felatio:  What you reading dat for G?

Steve: I’m looking for this week’s code words.

Crew: What you talking ‘bout Willis?

Steve: They use this paper to transmit code-words to operatives around the world. That’s why you can get this newspaper in Spain.

Crew: Oh!

Felatio: How do you know if d’word is a code-word?

Steve:  Simples, you go through the paper and count how many times the word occurs, if it occurs precisely 46 times then it’s a code word.

Crew: Why 46?

Steve: Because that’s the special number... and the funny thing is, there is always only ONE number that occurs precisely 46 times.

Crew: How do you know?

Steve: Because I made graphs.

Crew: Must have taken ages?

Steve: Nah, confuser did it all for me. PC Just scanned all the pages and then got this text recognition software. Did it a few times and noticed that only one word occurs 46 times each time, but it’s a different word each time, but there’s always only one word.

Crew: What made you want to do that?

Steve: 3 litres of white cider. 

Felatio: What was yisday’s code word den?

Steve: ‘Series.’ They used to use the letters section of the Times to send messages but people cottoned onto that quick. Of course I’ve only found one word but I’m sure I’ll soon figure out the rest of the code. People used to read the Times letters sections just to keep abreast of activity in the secret services. Became overrun with tourists, some even started sending spurious messages out to each other for a laugh. Some of these messages were read by real operatives who acted on the instructions: ‘Charlie, open the door and make the monkeys welcome ’ thing is they didn’t know what it meant but assumed that it must be some kind of secret instruction, but that they had missed a briefing, so they just improvised. That’s how the Balls brothers ended up in the Labour government.

Felatio: You can’t be series? (to sound like serious)

Steve:  Nahh, just messing about.

Felatio: So dere ain’t no code word?

Steve: I dunno. Funny idea though.

Felatio: Innit!You ‘ad me on do dere! But how did you come out with all dat stuff?

Steve: I prepared it beforehand. As soon as I picked up that paper I knew you’d ask me about it, you do it every time I do it, so I thought this time I’d spin you a yarn.

Crew: Sounds like some kind of conspiracy theory. Like the Illuminati murdered Frosty Sampson.

Steve:nodding in agreement Safe!

Crew: And that guy out of that band, he was killed too, that funny guy on the TV even said it.

Felatio: What funny guy?

Crew: You know, the curly one.

Felatio: Oh yeah. But why did the Illuminati want to kill Frosty?

Crew: ‘Cos he tried to expose them. In that song he says: ‘they don’t like you very much!’ he’s talking about the Illuminati, so they killed him.

Felatio: They killed him just for that song?

Crew: Yeah!

Felatio: Bollocks!

Crew: What do you mean bollocks. Anything’s possible!

Felatio: Just saying, it’s a load of bollocks, they didn’t kill Sampo for that.

Crew: Well, I’m just saying.

Felatio: They killed Sampson because he was physically unable to perform 60 dates at the Megabowl, and they were planning on adding 50 more. They soon realised that physically he would be unable to fulfil his contract. So he was liquidated. Insurance paid up and covered the costs and the thousands of fans who kept their worthless tickets as a souvenir helped cover the bonuses.

Crew: Yeah, Craig Cutston got the same treatment I reckon.

Felatio: Like you say man, anything’s possible. When you’re worth more dead than alive you’d better open your eyes to who you think your friends are.

Steve: I heard from one of his neighbours that they heard weird rhythmical drumming and wailing the night he died.

Felatio: One word: Ritual-sacrifice.

Steve: That’s two words.

Felatio: Well, it’s hyphenated.

Steve: What about Faul Mcartney?

Crew: eh?

Steve: There’s a theory that Paul Mcartney died in 1966 , and replaced with Faul, that’s why he had

bare feet on the zebra crossing on the cover of Abbey Road and is out of step with the rest of the Beatles.

Crew: eh?

Steve: Thing is Faul Mcartney himself, also became a loose cannon and so McCartney himself was killed AGAIN and replaced by Billy Shears.

Crew: eh?

Steve: Think about it! It all fits.

Crew: Does it..? Think about it yourself, why does Paul having bare-feet and walking out of step on a zebra crossing on an album cover mean he’s dead? How does that work?

Steve: Well I didn’t really think about it. It just made sense at the time.

Crew: Did it? I’ve got bare-feet, does that mean I’m dead?

Steve:  Nah, it just means you you’re a chump who paid fifty notes to get his head shaved. They do that to monkeys at the Bloody Mary university for free. Why don’t you volunteer for vivisection?

Crew:  Yeah, i’d get a free haircut I suppose.

Steve:  Anyway, Roach told me, I think he believes it, and somehow it rubbed off on me. Something about the way he talks to you, you can’t draw a breathuntil you agree with everything he says.

Crew: Roach’s a nutter, he smokes dried banana skins.

Felatio: Roach was trying to tell me about Niburu the other day. Reckons the ancients had spaceships because there’s a hover-speeder and a picture of a helicopter on the wall of an Egyptian temple, says there’s also an engraving showing an extra planet in the solar system, but it has such a long orbit that it’s been invisible for the past thousands of years but now apparently it’s coming home and there are loads of aliens on it too and they used to live on earth and it explains the missing link and why there are ONLY twenty four hours a day AND why the planet Venus spins anti-clockwise.

Crew: Well it would make a bit of a change.

Steve: I believe in space dogs from Sirius!

Felatio: You can’t be Sirius!

Crew: What about that guy who disappeared then?

Steve: What guy?

Crew: That famous guy who was on the telly.

Felatio: Narrows it down.

Crew: That guy who was that pop producer, what happened to him?

Steve: I dunno.

Crew: Yeah you do?

Steve: What do you mean ‘yeah I do’

Crew: He went like the Mary Celeste. He was in the middle of eating dinner at his Chelsea flat, glass of wine on the table, a few mouthful’s of his mash tater gone. Then suddenly so is he.

It’s been 3 weeks now without sight of him. Missing person’s bureau had an advert on the TV, the newspapers ran the story.

Felatio: You mean Tommy Sugarspoon? He’s dead.

Crew: Maybe, but what happened, what’s the circumstances? Who gets killed halfway through eating their dinner at home? No signs of a struggle, the guy just vanished while eating his taters.

Steve: That’s deep man.Taking  a man while eating his taters.  How can you do that to someone while he’s having his dinner. That’d be like fighting someone while they’re on the toilet. Should have let him clean his plate first. There’s no dignity anymore.