'Bill Drammond is a cultural magician, and

BOXING DAY

26 December 1997

I get books for Christmas.

It's the way I like it.

One of them was a book of medieval Japanese Verse.

Translated for the likes of me.

One of the verses I thought would be good at the beginning of this book.

If pressed to compare

This brief life, I might declare

It's like the boat

That crossed this morning's harbour

Leaving no mark on the world.

It was written by somebody called Mansei. In or around ad 730. After reading it I wrote:

That's as maybe Mansei But that won't stop us Wasting our lives Trying.

Then I read

the next poem in the book.

How does it happen?

I take this dried fish, your gift,

And go to the shore

And throw it into the Ocean

It rises and swims away

It was written by somebody called Tsukan.

I liked it.

I liked it a lot.

And I thought

It would make a good poem to

have at the back of this book.

WILLIAM BUTTERWORTH REVEALED

18 December 1998

A week to go before Christmas and I'm sitting in the library, correcting the story 'Art Terrorist Incident at Luton Airport'. A young person has sat down at the table next to me. He lets thump a heavy pile of books and makes to get on with his stud­ies, but my concentration has been broken. I look over to see what his weighty tomes are. From the look of the young man I expect them to be on architecture or petrochemicals or at least something equally worth spending time reading in a library. But no. It's the Rare Record Price Guide 97/8, All You Need to Know About the Music Business by Donald S. Passman and Q's Encyclopaedia of Rock Stars. I ought to tap him on the shoulder immediately and whisper in his ear, 'Son, don't even think about it. Go and do something useful with your life. This stuff will only make you unhappy. Learn how to mend roads, build bridges or save lives.' But I don't. What I want to tell him is that the entry for The KLF in Q's encyclopaedia is a pack of lies. But I don't do that either. What I do do is stop correcting my Bewley's/Luton Airport story and start writing this one.

Some time last year I received a letter from an acquaintance I've known for four or five years, but the envelope was addressed to William Butterworth. In the letter itself there was no reference made as to why the sender had chosen the unfamiliar yet strangely familiar name on the envelope. I thought no more about it. A couple of months later, the Butterworth incident forgotten, I was into a lengthy pub debate on the significance of the Pink Fairies and their influence on the roots of London punk rock with friend and writer Chris Brook, when he brought up the name Butterworth. He had been told by a reliable source that my surname was not Drummond at all but Butterworth, and that I had changed it because Butterworth wasn't the sort of name upon which you could build a legend. Rather strange.

Then last Christmas I was given a copy of Q's Encyclopaedia of Rock Stars. On unwrapping the present and duly thanking the giver, my vanity prompted me to flick the pages looking for the Ks and hoping for a generous KLF entry. To my satisfaction, there it was. 'KLF - Bill Drummond; Jimmy Cauty. 1986. Nov, Drummond (b. William Butterworth, April 29, 1953, South Africa), who had already worked in Scotland as a set designer, carpenter and deep-sea trawlerman, joined Liverpool power pop combo Big In Japan blah blah blah .. .'

'Butterworth? Where's this sodding Butterworth stuff coming from?' I slammed the book shut, suppressed my anger and got on with the season of goodwill. I'm no stranger to the world of the pseudonym and have enjoyed using a couple myself: King Boy D and, very briefly, Timeboy. Both done in a very obvious and knowing way, aping the black-American-artist tradition of creating pseudonyms that tuff up or weird out their image. The world is a better place with names the like of Timbaland, Howlin Wolf, Ice T and Muddy Waters in it. I thought it an act of high-camp creative genius when my friend Z named the three individuals in The Love Reaction, his mid-80s band, Cobalt Stargazer, Kid Chaos and Slam Thunderhide, and named him­self Zodiac Mindwarp. But changing one's name from Butterworth to Drummond - what was that about? To do such a thing wouldn't be about creative genius of either a homeboy or high-camp variety. It smelt of real deception, something to be hidden, to be ashamed of, weakness.

In many circles it's bad enough to have been born in South Africa, the white South African being one of the most loathed subspecies of mankind known to the Western liberal. If I'm in company and for some reason my origins are revealed, I proudly recount that my father was a Church of Scotland mis­sionary in the Transkei bush; that I was breast-fed in a mud hut; that my first words were in Xhosa, a language of the Bantu people, in fact Nelson Mandela's native tongue. As an extra badge of honour I can also lay claim to the fact that my parents beliefs ('All men are born equal in the eyes of the Lord') were not shared by the then incoming apartheid government, thus making their position untenable and forcing their return to God's own country before I was 18 months old. So you see, I have no shame or guilt about rny place of birth and even if I did have, I'm bigger than you.

But the Butterworth thing, that's different. A couple of months will go by and it won't enter my head. I answer phones confidently, 'Bill Drummond speaking.' Sign the dotted line W. E. Drummond, without further thought. Then there in my head is a voice saying, 'Drummond (b. William Butterworth, Apr 29, 1953, South Africa). If he has already lied to you about such a fundamental thing as his name, he has probably lied to you about everything else in his life and career. This man is not to be trusted. He is a conman, shyster, scam-merchant and trick­ster and I could see through him all along.'

I drown out the voice. 'No, no, my name is Drummond. The clan motto is "Gang Warily" and we have at least three tartans: Hunting, Royal and Ancient. A forebear of mine, Margaret Drummond, married Malcolm Canmore, King of the Scots. Our chief supported the Jacobite cause. As long as there has been a unified Scotland there have been Drummonds. It's not a joke name like McTavish or Naughtie, it's a proud and a strong name, and it's my name and it always has been and always will be. The name of my father, and my father's father, and my father's father's father.'

'Methinks the laddy doth protest too much', you may mutter.

I grew up hoping to hear about other Drummonds, ones that had made their way in the world, but no Drummonds played in our national football team, or even for the then Division One teams. There was Pete Drummond, the part-time Radio One disc jockey and Don Drummond the Jamaican trombone player and that was about it. Nobody worth making a playground claim for as a distant relative of mine.

Two weeks ago I was in Waterstones looking for Christmas presents. On one of the display tables heaving with the newly published was a stack of the weighty Virgin Encyclopaedia Of Rock. I looked furtively for references to my own contribution to popular culture. An unfocused rage headbutted its way into my skull. Who is this William Butterworth? Where has he come from? Am I really him? Have I been all along? Am I not being told something? Is my whole life a lie, not just the bits I choose? Maybe I should write to the editors of these so-called rock ency­clopaedias, explaining that my name is not Butterworth and never has been. Then I imagined receiving letters back from these editors. 'Dear Mr Butterworth, Thank you for your letter dated 4 December 1998. We have it from reliable sources that your name has never been and never will be Drummond. It is just a fantasy that you may want to believe but nonetheless have created to further your career in show business. We are not fooled. Yours sincerely, the Chairman of the Board of Rock Facts, Pop Ephemera and Dance Music Statistics.'

That night I got home and started rummaging through my collection of second-hand filing cabinets stuffed with all sorts of facts, ephemera and statistics gathered up and hoarded over a lifetime. Somewhere in that lot I knew I had a birth certificate. Surely that would confirm who I am. Some hours later I found what I was looking for, dog-eared and a dirty olive green. The first word that confronted my eyes upon this scrap of worthless litter was 'BUTTERWORTH', written in a large upper-case hand. The printed matter was in Afrikaans. I read:
Geboorteplek BUTTERWORTH, C P

Geboortedatum 29TH APRIL 1953

Ras van ouers EUROPEAN

Geslag MALE

Vournaam WILLIAM ERNEST

Familienaam DRUMMOND

No mention of the Rosalind Mary Drummond and Jack Scott Drummond who I always assumed to be my mum and dad, just somebody called C P Butterworth. I phoned my mother, expect­ing the worst. Expecting to have to come to terms with the fact that I was the progeny of some poor teenage Afrikaans girl, who got in the family way and had her baby adopted by those good missionaries Jack and Rosalind Drummond.

'Mum, who is C P Butterworth?'

'C P Butterworth?'

'Yes, Butterworth. The name on my birth certificate.'

'Butterworth is the name of the town in South Africa where you were born. C P stands for Cape Province. Surely I told you how I had to drive fifty miles over dirt track to get to the near­est hospital, and me a month overdue? And when you came out you weighed ten pounds and ten ounces; the Bantu nurses had never seen such a big baby. And when they left it was just you, me and the full moon.'

Yet none of the above explains how the editors of the world's most comprehensive rock encyclopaedias have been able to gain precise knowledge of my place of birth and then confuse it with my ancient and proud family name . ..