Though I loathe reality TV and especially Big Brother (Channel 4’s flagship show ever since the station misunderstood Government calls for ‘more on television’), it’s impossible to isolate oneself completely from what’s going on in and around BB when there’s such saturation coverage by the popular news media.
So unfortunately I failed to miss the tabloid revelations in mid July that colourful contestant Pete ‘Tourettes Syndrome’ Bennett (above) is allegedly a regular at Brighton’s Vice Party fetish dance club and other fetish and BDSM clubs in the South Coast resort where he lives.
Statistically of course it would be surprising if there weren’t a genuine perv or two among the fakes, misfits and wannabees who constitute Big Brother’s human fodder. What intrigued me more was the subsequent revelation that Pete is the son of Anne Stephenson, who was a violinist in early ’80s pop string quartet The Venomettes and in Marc Almond’s ‘other’ group Marc and the Mambas.
Anne imprinted herself very forcefully on my consciousness one night at a Soft Cell party held at London’s Columbia Hotel, which had a reputation in the ’80s as the city’s ‘alternative’ rock ’n’ roll hotel owing to its relaxed attitude towards bands whose budgets didn’t stretch to The Dorchester. I was a journo on Sounds at that time, and Anne, who didn’t know me, and didn’t know that I was an old friend of Soft Cell and their larger-than-life manager Stevo, interpreted a typically sarky but good-natured exchange between me and Stevo as a vicious and unwarranted attack on him by a member of that criminal fraternity known as the gutter press.
For the next half hour or more, she subjected me to a tongue-lashing of unmitigated ferocity, which other members of the party either didn’t notice or were just enjoying too much to try to stop. I kept expecting the nearest witness, Soft Cell’s Dave Ball (who was with Gini, the Venomettes/Mambas violinist who later became his wife) to put in a good word with Anne for me. But this was during the band’s notorious ecstasy period, and Dave just sat there motionless with eyes like dinnerplates, taking in the free non-stop ecstatic cabaret and not saying a word.
Anne, who also toured the world with the Communards and played in the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, is now the leader of Brilliant Strings and according to her website is once again working with Marc Almond. Apparently her son’s new-found celebrity has made life better for her, and In the demure portrait in her web biography, she doesn’t look much like a girl who’d tear your ears off before being properly introduced. But I won’t be taking any chances if we do happen to bump into each other again.
www.channel4.com/bigbrother/
www.viceparty.com
www.brilliantstrings.co.uk/html/anne.html
www.marcalmond.co.uk
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