Modfather’s offer I could not refuse
HELENA IS JUST CHILLIN’ IT’S WETTEST IN CARDIFF
AT 17, London lad Ian Stone would have killed to meet his hero Paul Weller of The Jam.
Just 40 years later he got his wish. And it was actually frontman Weller’s idea.
“Paul phoned me up and we went for a bite to eat,” says Ian, these days a longestablished name on the stand-up comedy circuit. “It’s been nice to get to know him a bit.”
It wasn’t so much that the tables had turned, with Ian now his hero’s hero. It was more that he’d written a rather fine book, To Be Someone, about how much The Jam had meant to him in his teens.
And Paul, having seen a draft, had rung to say he loved it.
The book tells how The Jam helped Ian through his late-70s adolescence – hanging out with mates, struggling to impress the girls, living with parents who “couldn’t go five minutes without screaming abuse at one another”.
Different
“Paul and I chatted for about an hour,” Ian tells me. “He also gave me a quote for the cover – ‘I’d forgotten how s**t it was in the 70s.’ Someone asked me later if I’d been star-struck. I said: ‘No! I’m 57!’ But it was still a thrill. And we’ve met a few times since.”
The book does indeed recall a different age. “No internet, little choice of food, little choice of anything, to be honest,” Ian points out.
“And compared to now, hardly any electrical goods. We had a Hoover, radio, telly, kettle, that was about it.
“Life was simpler. But there was also more violence, a low-level kind, particularly at the football (Ian’s a lifelong Arsenal
COMIC & THE JAM SUPERFAN fan) and at gigs. Paul told me it was the violence he remembered most.” Ian’s book chronicles an obsession that began in his early teens, when he first heard The Jam on John Peel’s latenight Radio 1 show.
For five years that obsession would be all-consuming. When the band split in 1982, Ian was “monumentally shocked”. Later he’d accept it was a sign to move on, like his hero was doing.
Ian has been doing stand-up now for 30 years. It’s been frustratingly quiet of late, for obvious reasons, but he hasn’t entirely been in hibernation. There’s been radio, writing, podding (he’s a regular on Alan Davies’s Arsenal podcast The Tuesday Club) plus his BT Sport show The Football’s On. “That gives me something to do,” he says, “otherwise my family would have killed me by now...”
So how about another memoir? More on life with his warring parents, perhaps? In book one, his dad, now nearly 90, gets serious stick. “What’s funny,” says Ian, “is he rings me after reading it and goes: ‘I love it!’ I say: ‘What about where I call you the most useless adult I’ve ever known?! “‘Oh,’ he goes, ‘I don’t mind that. It’s true!’”
● To Be Someone by Ian Stone (Unbound, £16.99) available now.
BRITAIN’S least surprising weather news is in – it is always wet in Wales and Scotland.
Cardiff is officially the UK’S rainiest city, followed by Glasgow.
The Welsh capital gets lashed by an average of 12 days rain a month, racking up 96mm every four weeks.
Glasgow averages 94mm of monthly rain but gets 14 days of downpours in the same period.
A spokesman for bathroom firm Showers To You, which did the study, said: “UK weather is known for being unpredictable – but one thing you can always expect is rain.”
Huddersfield was handed third spot with 86mm of rainfall.
Completing the top 10 on the list of the rainiest UK cities and towns are Bournemouth and Liverpool, which both have 70mm per month.
Research found Walton-on-the-naze and Southend-on-sea, both in Essex, are best for dodging downfalls, getting 46mm and 43mm respectively.