I wake up around nine and enjoy another hour in the sack before getting up. So I can enjoy the after show festivites, Pete Jackson has laid on a car to pick us up and take us home afterwards, which is jolly nice of him. I really want to download some of the photos I've been taking but having lost the USB cable in Leicester. I have to go out to a camera shop to get a new one. Mrs Jupitus reminds me that there's a camera shop on London Road, so I drive up there and ask the young lady if she can help. She doesn't have the lead but offers me a card reader for twenty quid. I stare at the item then realise I already have one, huzzah! I head back home to dig out the errant peripheral, and sit in the kitchen and download the 200 or so snaps. Thankfully, most of them have come out ok and I only junk about one in ten. The ones that Ade took of me as Elvis in Edinburgh, launching myself through the crowd to serenade some poor woman are particularly gratifying. I go into iPhoto and create a gallery of 150 of the best snaps and furiously start burning discs of the images to give to as many people as I can.
Before the cab arrives I manage to burn four discs, so I decide to give them to Ade, Neil and Yvonne, Micky and Pete Jackson. Tonight my guest list groans under the weight of comedian Mark Steel as well as a brace of Blockheads and my mates Fred and Tim alongside the shapely Mrs
Jupitus and Molly, who has decided to do The Bonzos for her school music project. She points out that these two trips to see them and attendance at the after show parties therefore counts as homework. Before I get to debate that, we all pile into the people carrier and speed off for West London.
Arriving early for a change, we dump our stuff in the dressing room, and Molly asks if I can take her out onstage to have a look at all the gear. We wander out and as we pass in the stairs, Peter Jackson says Bill Bailey will be coming along tonight and giving us his Keynsham. Molly stands quietly taking it all in I get her to test a microphone and she seems surprised to her her own voice coming out of the monitors at her feet. I explain why they're needed as we all suit up for our last run through the soundcheck ahead of the last show. Ade arrives onstage and we're off. There is some debate among the Jupitus contingent about what I should wear onstage tonight. I am hoping to forego my suit and stay in 501s and my long coat. My wife says this makes me look like a tramp, my daughter thinks I look "awesome". However, I owe my wife a deal more, so suit it is. Pre-show and I really fancy a drink, but Ade points out we should be sharp on the last night, and bearing in mind yesterday's cock-ups I take his point and sip at a bottle of water. I settle various family and guests in their seats and while I'm out front, meet Viv Stanshall's first wife who is a lovely lady. I wish I'd had the bottle to ask her if she thought he'd mind all this, but I'm not sure I really want to know the answer.
Show kicks off pretty much on time tonight and has all the frisson you'd expect from a last night. As we go through each number I'm keenly aware that this is the last time we'll be doing them on the tour. Ade wanders out for I'm Bored and I punch him on the back, "Go on son, have it!" I shout, quite unnecessarily. I manage to get through Monster without incident and for the first time ever, get all the words of Big Shot right. During Mr Slater I get up into the balcony and get a load of photos of Ade's crowd-surfing parrot. Rockaliser Baby and Tent feel amazing, I leave my distortion pedal on for Tent and as I flail away at the strings in my brothel creepers, tartan trousers and hat, feel for a split second like Mick Jones, but am aware that I look more like Lowell George. At the interval we all sit and sip beer and gather our thoughts for the last time. Sam Spoons calls us in to his dressing room where he has made craft paper models of me and Ade that are staggeringly lifelike. We accept them with effusive gratitude and wonder how we will get them home without damaging them. Ade is off to Kenya with Comic Relief tomorrow, but will be getting hammered tonight.
We discuss the etiquette of arriving in a drought zone while dehydrated and then before we reach any real conclusion it's back onstage. I do a walk-through during We Are Normal smoking a pipe and brandishing one of Roger Ruskin Spear's "Marvellous" speech balloons. As we walk out for the chorus of Sport, I look back at Ade and say, "One more time for Viv..." The feeling that we are coming to the end of something magical starts to creep into our minds, but the show is so incandescent that it is blotted out. Bill Bailey joins us onstage for a sweet and spacey version of Keynsham. Having heckled Larry after Jollity Farm, I suit up for Elvis one last time, and blast through Canyons. Then there is a final, triumphant Intro & Outro featuring new guests Bill Bailey on diggeridoo and Peter Jackson and Bob Carruthers on chequebook. As we stand in the wings watching the old men's reworking of Head Ballet disintegrate into chaos before our eyes, I see Ade across the stage watching them with rapt attention. He is crying. I turn away before I start. We walk out to the stage and for one last time sing the anti-establishment anthem Busted, just as relevant now as it was in 1968. The show ends beautifully and poignantly with the ensemble humming Silent Night as Vernon Dudley Bohay Noel plays his saw. We take our final bow, Roger Ruskin Spear does his final gag and that's it. Show's over.
Backstage there are hugs among all of us, crew, Bonzos, house band, stand-ins, and I start crying myself. This has been the most amazing experience of my performing career. The Bonzos were a band who spoke to my sensibilities. They were hip, musically gifted, funny, charming and utterly English. I never thought I would see them live, let alone get the chance to work with them. This tour has been completely devoid of ego, aggro or tantrum and I feel all the richer for having been on it. In the labyrinthine corridors after the show Ben Elton says how much he enjoyed it and I also meet Ade's missus, Jennifer and their daughter Freya. I pack up the Gibson and all the kit for the last time and stash everything in the dressing room; I am totally knackered and utterly alive. My daughter has spotted Martin Freeman in the crowd, so demands an introduction. And so the ultimately painful process of saying goodbye to everyone begins at the party. I hug Innes for slightly too long and can never thank him enough for allowing me the privilege of this, and slowly I make my way round the room and I shake hands with all of these childhood legends one last time on the tour - Bob, Sam, Vernon, Roger, Larry and Rodney. Up in the dressing room I take Ade to one side and explain how much this tour has meant to me and how brilliant he has made it. So often in life you meet people you loved as a kid and they turn out to be dicks. Ade was a complete prince from the moment I met him, so in a moment of love and weakness I give him my Fender Telecaster.
Will they do any more shows is all I get asked now. Who knows? Ask them is all I can say. I hope they do. For the Bonzo Dog Doo Dah Band are something unique and magical, and long may they continue to be so. Thank you and good night.
Phill "Mr Apollo 2006" Jupitus
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Friday November 17th, Shepherd's Bush Empire
So here we are at the final two shows of the tour. After my lengthy sleep yesterday it's not that I'm refreshed so much as I feel an inner joy at having got some rest, and I get up on Friday at about 10.30am. Tonight, my mum and dad are coming with my sister and her fella, as well as the divine Mrs Jupitus and my youngest Molly. They'll be making their way into town later by train; I load up the car and drive in.
It's pissing down and, as I hurtle along the A13, the occasional tug on the steering wheel tells me it's bloody windy as well. I finally park behind Shepherd's Bush shopping centre and walk around the green to the Empire, the rain lashing against my umbrella and my ill-considered Vans shoes getting completely soaked. Squelching into the stage door I deposit my bits and wander out to the stage to participate in the delightfully familiar ritual of the soundcheck. As everybody's involved we run through the now customary Rockaliser Baby into Tent.
Paul Merton is also on board tonight and is essaying The Sound Of Music and Rhinocratic Oaths, which were numbers Ade was doing. I feel a bit bad for him as he adores doing both, but there you go. Upstairs in catering there's a rather lovely veggie chilli and thai green chicken curry. Ade, who usually stashes his food for after the gig, is partaking hot for a change and, once he sees me piling into a rather lovely lemon cheesecake, he even has afters. One of the things about having your family at a gig is that you want them to have decent seats, so I enquire as to how we can ensure that happend as the seating at Shepherd's Bush Empire is unreserved.
