I'll never forget Ian Reed, the Manager for XTC as he handed me the keys to our touring hire van telling me it was a 'Dodge' and I'd find it in the main car park in the centre of Swindon. I took the train from Paddington and was quietly getting excited about the prospect of driving the band around France & Spain in a modern American minibus. Picture this......I arrived at the car park, looked around for my "home'  for the next three weeks, to see the cream Commer 'Dodge' van sat there waiting for me. It looked more like an old ice-cream van that you used to see in the streets as a kid. On that first journey with the band...... I can't possibly repeat what they said about their manager........(it broke down on the way to the first gig and we tried to hide it when we got there it was so embarrassing)

The two other support bands being the English Beat and UB40, there was always something to smoke about!!!

And this in fact became a very scary moment for me when we flew to Australia. I had checked and double checked my bags before we flew off to make sure nothing had been left and was completely cool about being searched at Sydney airport on our arrival. It wasn't until I got to my hotel room and found my toothbrush next to a small bag of weed did I have a small heart attack. Always empty your case before flying!!!

I have to admit, the bands music was not an instant hit for me personally but I grew to love it as I did the guys themselves. Being from Swindon, they were very close cousins to my pals from Oxford, if you see what I mean, and our ages weren't greatly different. They had a couple of really good roadies too in Steve and Gary and I went on to work with Gary on quite a few projects after this one.

Ace was the promoter from Melbourne, Michael Coppell and he was the partner with Dirty Pool in Sydney, that brought XTC to Australia.

A trip to Sydney Opera house of course is a must, and I snapped Colin above, and Dave below as we ambled around on a day off.

 The different support acts we had on this tour were impressive. Australia at this time had an employment rule that stipulated that for every non domicile musician that came into the country to earn monies for playing, there had to be the same number of Australian musicians on the bill in support role. It was great for some up and coming bands and Dirty Pool which was also an artist management company made this work for them by putting their band Flowers, soon to be known as 'Icehouse', on several of the shows as the support band.

It also worked in reverse too, in as much as you could have a foreign band as a support act and build their career supporting bigger Australian acts as well.