Whoah Yeah

A good friend of mine once worked as a music PR taking bands around Asia. She was really an all-purpose babysitter, as she describes it, guarding their passports and stocking their hotel rooms with whatever it took to for-God’s-sake keep them inside. Seoul wasn’t ready for New Kids on the Loose with no ID and no idea where they were.

We pumped her for Spinal Tap, but it was her Bryan Adams account that made us feel cheerful about our boring New York lives. The pockmarked (but compensatingly well-hung, according to the dreadful Popbitch newsletter) Canadian really was as antiseptic as his songs. In Hong Kong, Bryan called her up from his hotel room. He’d heard that fax machines were a really good deal here. He’d like to go and look at fax machines.
   “Fax machines,” we said, universally disappointed unless he was going to throw them out the window.
   “Well, they were pretty expensive back then,” she said loyally.

The PR’s rule no. 1: keep them in the hotel room, even the vegans. She begged him to stay put, then spent the afternoon rounding up salesmen to come to his room with a parade of the latest models. Fax machine models.

Then Bryan realised the buttons weren’t in English, and dropped the idea.

I feel much better now knowing that he shagged Diana, at least. Especially since his photo of the Queen is on the new Canadian stamps.