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Deathstars Whiplasher must be the devil…

How the Deathstars vocalist drains batteries in Wales whilst at a gig in Germany via the phone line. Don't laugh, it could happen to you!

No, I’m not making some kind of nan-type generalisation on blokes with black hair who wear make up (you know, the kind of thing you over-hear over 60s mutter to each other when a metal fan gets on the bus), the above statement is entirely based on FACT.

Some very strange occurrences happened recently when interviewing Whiplasher Bernadotte aka Andreas. Not the fact that the conversation always goes a bit blue due to his preoccupation with shagging, more that my mini cassette player broke – THREE TIMES. And I’m not the only one this has happened to.

This is how it went: prepare for phone call, fresh-from –packet new batteries – check. New tape – check. Ring up speaking clock (Oh, it’s not Tinkerbell any more, it’s Fern!) – check. Check levels from speaking clock. All okay. Phone rings, it’s Whiplasher, fresh from sound-checking in Germany (last time we spoke he was on the red carpet going into the Grammies). All going okay, when suddenly I look down and the effin dictaphone’s not running. Press record again (whilst still trying to maintain the air of everything’s going ok…) Nothing. Change batteries mid conversation. It’s working. Look down again, five mins later and the thing has stopped. Repeat above. Again, I look down a good few mins along the line and yet again it’s stopped working. Somewhat embarrassingly, I tell Whiplasher, ‘Look mate, I’m going to have to ring you back in a minute, something wild is going on here, the effin’ thing keeps breaking’. I then spend a few minutes chucking stuff around the house trying to find the old dictaphone (I never use that – it looks like a big bus and is shit), eventually find it, put some new batteries in it, with some spares, just in case the extremely unlikely event of this one breaking down occurs and phone Whiplasher back. Chuffed. That is until I look down once again and would you believe? This one is now not working. Fortunately, the last set of batteries held up for the rest of the interview, and on play back there was only a couple of seconds missing. Phew.

How weird is that?