[The Zion Egg]: Articles (Fans)

HOYLAKE - CENTER OF THE UNIVERSE..

You love 'em, right? I mean, that's why you're here looking at this when you should be getting some exercise isn't it?

You love 'em but you want to know more. It's not enough to stand in the pub saying "oh yeah, man, The Coral. Fuckin' cool as fuck, you should give 'em a listen they're like, good, y'know?". No. You want more. You want your audience to be waiting on your every word as nervous girls scramble about in their bags for a pen to scribble their numbers down for you, "Ring me!" they insist as they press the scrap of paper into your palm and plant a smacker on your cheek. You want quality information and you want it now. We at WTOGTS know this. Like a wise older brother we have an instinct for these things and we are here to help you. In the first of a brand new feature that will take regular endoscopically(?) detailed insights into life behind the scenes at The Coral HQ, we sent our roving hack (a title given to him because of his footballing style rather than his journalistic abilities), Juice Terry, all the way to the library to dig up any old shite he could find on the new nerve center of 21st century rock 'n roll, Hoylake.

Right, first things first 'cos I know it's what you're thinking, "Hoylake? Where the fuck is that?" right? Grab a map. Got one? Now look towards North-West England and find Liverpool. OK? Look below Liverpool and you'll see the Mersey River/Estuary, across this stretch of water you come to a peninsula that looks like a dick with the Bobbies Helmet cut off, this is The Wirral Peninsula. Follow the coast around towards the Irish Sea, turn left, down the coast a bit, left again, STOP. You now should be within spitting distance and if you're not you can fuck off, I'm not going through that again.

Having arrived safely you're going to want to look around. Well we're not Japanese tourists so homes, schools etc. are off limits. Brought your golf clubs? Rupert the Bear trousers? LOTS of money? Well you're in luck as Hoylake is home to the World Famous (it says here) Royal Liverpool Golf Club, a bastion of the old school tie mentality and more recently the afternoon hangout of retired Footballers. Think Tarby and Sean swapping tales of their working class backgrounds as they ponce about in BAD clothes and you're somewhere near the truth. The confusing thing here, well it fucked me anyway, is that reading the press we understand that the members of the band don't consider themselves 'Scousers'. After all they're not from Liverpool, as you've already learned it's a good headless dick's distance away from where they call home. So why the FUCK is the local golf course called the Royal LIVERPOOL!? Tectonic plates? Considering the age of the committee it's certainly possible that some of them date from the Cretaceous period but it's fucking MILES away. Answers please.

Still on the landmark thread Hoylake also boasts one of the peninsula's finest beaches at Red Rocks, a place where Fishermen bring their daily catch to sell, still glowing luminous green after being coaxed from the Irish Sea using Plutonium as bait. So what about Hoylake's celebrity pedigree? What luminaries have preceded our lads in blazing a trail from the town and putting it 'on the map'. Don't worry, I won't keep you long. It is a great British tradition to put our sporting heroes on a pedestal only for them to let us down badly. One such icon who fits this category is Chris Boardman, occasional resident. After fluking a gold medal at the Barcelona Olympics by using a dodgy bike, Chris returned home triumphant and vowed that his next mission was to crack the Tour de France. Sponsors lined the streets to back the humble Brit and after signing to one of Europe's top cycling teams, Chris then went on to epitomise British sport by failing miserably. Not once but year after sorry year. Chris now runs a massage parlour in Birkenhead and sold his gold medal on Ebay with the description 'looks nice around your neck but is a bit big.'

Another more famous celebrity associated (however loosely) with Hoylake is the Rt. Hon. Glenda Jackson MP. We all know Glenda from being pretty fit as a younger lass in the acting game and was always good for a tidy nipple shot as she cavorted with some young buck. Now though Glenda has gone to seed somewhat as she twats around parliament doing fuck all with the rest of them. Her constituents ( in London somewhere) claim to have voted for her because they remember her 'being pretty fit as a younger bird in films.' If you've got it, flog it to death.

Daniel Craig, the ACTOR, comes from Hoylake. Big deal, I'm getting bored now. Also the fellas from OMD, wow!

Sorry readers. Here's a good one to finish with though. Years ago, probably when the golf course was actually still in Liverpool, a certain Eric Morecombe won a talent contest in Hoylake after beating a sword swallower into second place. No small feat in itself but Eric's reward for his achievement was an audition in The Jack Hilton Show (?). And who did he meet there? You guessed it. That fucking pain in the arse midget who was never QUITE happy playing the straight man to Morecombe's comic genius.

And that, sadly, is where we leave our introduction to Hoylake. I'd like to say that I've only scraped the surface here and that it'll become a regular feature on WTOGTS but believe me, it won't. I hope what I've told you helps you in the pulling stakes though I fear, as happened with me when I road-tested it last night, that you may well scare your friends into labeling you 'a boring bastard' Of course you already know about the bus shelter were the boys used to write songs and whittle twigs into drum sticks and I haven't mentioned any pubs (they don't call them bars here) because there aren't any. For further information or to verify anything I've made up from the above you can ring Chantelle on 09001 69 69 69, mention my name, have your credit card and some Kleenex to hand and if a fella called Chris answers, be nice to him won't you?

Ta-ra, Juice Terry.