Everybody is stunned. Jimmy The Grunt is talking, and he’s claiming to have seen Como in real life, with a drink in his hand, and half-blocked. After a couple of confused seconds Barney shouts him down. Bullshite, when the fuck did you see Como? he says to him. At the Kelvin Hall in Glasgow, 1975, on the tenth day of the royal month of April, Jimmy The Grunt says, and on the occasion the crowd rushed the stage, he says to us, and when Como came back on to calm things down he was wearing a tartan bunnet and toasting the crowd with a glass of whiskey and he was very, conspicuously, half-blocked.

We just stood there: vanquished. Fuck me, Mad Frank Marby says, who knew? You should stick to fucking grunting if all you’re going to do is go around slandering Como, you carnaptious wee bastard, Barney says to him, and the lot of us walk off in a daze. You fucking think you know someone, Barney says, shaking his head and pulling his lips tight like a maniac.

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