Mat Bowles

When you're younger you can eat what you like, drink what you like and still climb into your 26 inch waist trousers and zip them closed. Then you reach that age, 24 / 25, your muscles give up they wave a little white flag and then without any warning at all, you're suddenly a fat bastard^[1]

Strange how an out of context sample on the opening track to a great album stays with you for years.

Sheriff Fatman was at, IIRC, #2 in the top 40 the week I got my GCSE results. When I was doing my A-levels (well, turning up to lessons, anyway), my friends were divided over music--Grunge was popular, naturally, Teen Spirit was released at the time, there were a lot of fans of mainstream pop, many simply didn't care. But, with a few exceptions, everyone like Carter USM.

But then, most of us liked Red Dwarf as well. Never saw them live, but you can just about make out Rimmer in this grainy vid of their last show--and yes, the head roadie did tend to do a warmup act wearing nowt but a sock. And yes, he really always was a Fat Bastard.

I lost all my CDs over the years, fortunately theyorkshergob has the best of, but not 30 Something, and the tape is both a little dead and, well, devoid of anything that will still play it.

But I think it counts as one of the best albums of the 90s^[2]. Partially, of course, because Damnations came out in '89. What's your nomination?

[1]When you see this, post a quote from Red Dwarf, I found this one here, although Total Red Dwarf seems to have a better collection, even if the site is infuriatingly badly configured, not only using iframes, but also disallowing internal links entirely, stupid bad SEO unaccessible practice.

[2] ninebelow started it, he listed several (in a locked post), I just thought I'd start with one. Look, I managed to combine two memes in one post, just, well, because. Because what?

New Red Dwarf on Dave tonight at 9pm

Woo Hoo!