'Bill Drammond is a cultural magician, and

DEATH BY DEED POLL

19 December 1998

I very rarely attempt to write anything after three in the after­noon. My mind moves into a different gear, where even the idea of trying to put words on paper is totally irrelevant. But tonight is different. Tonight I have been lying in bed unable to sleep; words, phrases, whole sentences have been going around and around in the darkness behind my closed eyelids, looking for a way out, looking for my notebook so they may be set down in it. Only then will they allow me to have my rest. So pyjama'd, slippered and dressing-gowned I have tiptoed down the stairs of this silent and December-cold house, crept into my work room and switched on the light.

What I want to write about is the 'William Butterworth Revealed' story. I've begun to see it, along with some of the other more recent stories I've written, in the context of art works, displayed in a White Wall Situation. I can't stop these thoughts. They keep recurring. I am powerless to resist them. Yesterday I imagined *WB Revealed' on a wall as a text piece, and next to it the relevant pages ripped out of Q's Encyclopaedia of Rock Stars and the Virgin Encyclopaedia of Rock, a page torn from a tourist book on clan history and my birth certificate.

The trouble is, if I were to do that it might reveal some inaccuracies in 'WB Revealed'. In fact, more lies than mere inaccuracies. Basically, the telephone conversation with my mother never happened. I've known ever since I can remember that I was born in a place called Butterworth, that my mother had to drive fifty miles over unmade roads to get there, that I was a month overdue, weighed ten pounds and ten ounces, and that the moon shone on me and her through the wee small hours. It is obvious from my birth certificate that there could be no confusion over my name; the fact that it is all written in English as well as Afrikaans leaves nothing to conjecture. So although I thought 'strange' when I first got the letter addressed to William Butterworth, by the time I had the Pink Fairies debate with Chris Brook things were becoming clearer. It was obvious that somewhere along the line my place of birth got confused with my family name. My guess is that at some time during my rock 'n' roll years a sharp-eyed and eager music journalist must have perused my passport as we travelled together across the continents. It was a regular thing for me to accompany a young pop reporter on a journey to some far country to interview Echo and The Bunnymen. Page one of my old-style large-format navy-blue passport reveals my name to be William Ernest Drummond. On page three there is a photo of me. But on page two, under the word Bearer, is written the 'name' Butterworth. Underneath that is the date 29 April 1953. To the left of the 'name' Butterworth is printed Place of Birth, and to the left of 29 April 1953 is printed Date of Birth. I remem­ber thinking it strange when I first received the passport that the authorities didn't see fit to state that Butterworth was in South Africa, rather than some corner of these islands.

What is certainly true is my unfocused and somewhat stupid anger at seeing myself portrayed as a man likely to present himself as someone different from whom he is. There is also the small matter of my father; I don't think he would take too kindly to the knowledge that we were, in reality, Butterworths. It may be in a different way, but he also suffers from the sin of being proud of his good name. He can trace our ancestry back to an apprentice stonemason working on Melrose Abbey in the 1300s (Melrose, in the Scottish borders, being his home town). So what is to be done?

The idea I have, and it seems like a good one, is that at the earliest opportunity I should change my name by deed poll to William Butterworth, and be done with it. Eric Morecambe and Vito Corleone made a similar move, and it didn't do them any harm.

BA BA GAA

7 March 1998

'Hey mista, you wan' Ba Ba Gaa? You wan' Ba Ba Gaa. I know you wan' Ba Ba Gaa. You see Ba Ba Gaa, you think Ba Ba Gaa bag of shit, OR, OR, we go.'

I try to ignore the persistent communicator of the above statement. I don't even try to make sense of what he is trying to tell me. It's seventeen minutes to midnight and I'm standing on the T-junction of Sudder Street and Mirza Ghalib Street, in what is obviously the most dangerous part of Calcutta. I've left the keys to my hotel room in a restaurant about a mile from where I'm standing. The boss of the hotel sleeps with his master key. The night porter didn't dare wake him. The city is silent. There is very little light. Street lamps don't exist around here. The pavements are littered with the sleeping homeless. There are no taxis. In daylight hours Calcutta has more buses, taxis, rick­shaws per square foot of tarmacadam than any other city I've ever visited. After dark the city falls silent. Nothing moves except the rats.

'We go Ba Ba Gaa now.' These Calcuttans don't give up. If they think you should want something they are trying to sell, they just keep banging at it right in your face. Hasn't anybody told them that the art of being a salesman is to get the punter to enjoy parting with his cash? To make him feel relaxed, that parting with the cash is a mere detail on the road to making life more complete?

'Ba Ba Gaa she real young. She little girl. She good.' The thing to do is completely ignore them, look the other way, pre­tend they don't exist. 'Hey mista, you look, she bag a shit you go.' Or that's what I try to convince myself. He's not giving up, and there is still no taxi. I've been unreliably told that Calcutta is the only place left in the world that still has hand-pulled rick­shaws, the kind you see in films like Empire of the Sun. My liberal sentiments have been shocked at the sight of them. The idea that you pay some underfed, barefoot, low-life-expectancy fellow human to use his own knotted muscle to drag you along while you just sit up there admiring the view seems to be on a par with condoning galley slaves. But then earlier today I heard an argument by a fellow whitey that if all the taxis in Calcutta were got rid of and replaced by rickshaw, the city's pollution would be cut by 80 per cent. Kids would stop dying of lead poi­soning; life expectancy would rise; there would be more jobs, as rickshaws only hold two passengers, compared to four in a taxi. And the taxi drivers forced to become rickshaw pullers would get fit and stop dying of heart disease. The fossil fuels would be saved. So slavery equals green, yes? No? I'm confused. The madman who is trying to fix me with his demonic stare and going on about Ba Ba Gaa is a rickshaw puller and, whatever else he is going on about, wants to get me into his rickshaw. My support of the green movement wins out over my anti-slavery sympathies.

'How many rupees to take me up to the Moulin Rouge restau­rant on Park Street and back?'

'You ask me how many rupees? You very rich man, me very poor man and you ask me how many rupees? You get in rick­shaw, I take you. You see Ba Ba Gaa.'

'No, I don't want to see Ba Ba Gaa. I want to get to the restau­rant before it closes.'

'OK, OR. I take you.' I decide not to even attempt to negotiate

the fare. He's hit my guilt spot. Of course, by the standards of 99.9 per cent of the world me very rich man, he very poor man. It's disgusting that I even contemplate trying to haggle with him about the price of a short ride that will only amount to a few pence, whatever it is. Anyway, I've got to get there before it closes.

Karma is a big thing for me, ever since John Lennon sang about the instant variety and Kerouac explained what it meant. It sits very comfortably with my 'Mrs Do As You Would Be Done By' upbringing. I had tried to impress the performance artist Marc J. Hawker with the claim that when I got to Calcutta I would sleep on the streets with the untouchables. In his per­forming art, Hawker pushes himself to his physical limits, naked, freezing and bleeding, just to prove he means it. But the thing is, I knew that Hawker wouldn't dare sleep on the streets of Calcutta. He needs an Arts Council grant and hip-and-highbrow spectators before he shows off. But me, I would do it just for hardman kicks. I don't think I ever believed my boast and since arriving in Calcutta I've known there is no way that I'm going to try the pavement out for comfort. So leaving my key in the restaurant and being forced to climb up on this rick­shaw is all part of the karma thing. 'Instant Karma's gonna get you.' And I'm getting mine.

So I climb up, and my man with the mad, staring eyes is off. Now in all those films I've seen with rickshaws, the pullers are always running as fast as they can trot, every muscle in their body straining to get to their passenger's/master's destination, but my man is walking at a lazy pace. It's not just that he's slow, but he is doing it with attitude. As if he doesn't give a shit that I need to get to the restaurant before it closes, to get my keys so I don't have to sleep on the street. He is pulling the thing with a nonchalant swagger, as if he thinks that although he may be a very poor man and me a very rich man, he's better than me. I look around. Is there an equivalent to a horsewhip handy, or am I just supposed to shout out 'Faster!

Faster!'? He is walking at about half my natural walking speed. I have an urge to climb down, get him to sit up in the rickshaw and run to the restaurant and back, pulling the rickshaw and him behind me. Why did I ever get in the rickshaw in the first place? I'm quite happy to run most places, when needs be. The answer is probably that I'm shit-scared of these Calcutta streets, as the witching hour approaches and the Thugees are tying their Kali coins in the corner of their hankies before they go out to do a bit of strangling. I suppose I thought a rickshaw and its puller would provide me with protection. Sitting up here I feel more unprotected than I have felt since kissing a gay mate who was dying of Aids, only this time I have ration­ality on my side. I feel my white, peely-wally face is beaming out into the evil darkness, saying 'Come and get me, I deserve it, me very rich you very poor, come on, hanky at the ready for a nice clean strangle. I won't struggle much, and I must be carrying plenty of rupees. If you don't get me, someone else will.'

But I just freeze. I don't shout 'Faster! Faster!' or get down and run; I just sit bolt upright and wait for Fate to do her thing. I will take it like a man. Tell Penelope I have always loved her. We've only gone about 300 yards when he pulls the rickshaw into a side street. My initial thought is that he knows a shortcut, like London cabbies do. But no, the street we are on is as direct as you can go. Then he drops his handles and I nearly capsize out of the thing. He turns to me, points a finger from each hand at me and locks me in his madman stare.

'Now! You have Ba Ba Gaa. She here.' Points to dark door. 'She li'l Gaa, she Ba Ba Gaa, she what you wan'. You look, if you think bag a shit we go. OK.'

It is only now that I make any sense of what he had been going on about before this karma-driven ride had begun. I begin to sense the approach of others, coming at me from behind. I look around. There are three other men closing in on me. One of them smiles a tombstone smile.

'You want a nice, clean young lady? We have just the one for you.'

Behind that dark door a young girl is sleeping, dreaming sweet dreams of an innocent life. No nightmare could be worse than her reality. Or is she lying awake, waiting in terror at the thought of what monster her master will bring back to her? I have prepared myself for all the poverty and leprosy-deformed human life that India can offer me, but what is going on here truly disgusts me. I'm being offered a young, enslaved girl to do whatever I want with - that's if she's not a bag of shit, of course. Is this the reputation my white face brings before me? White man comes to Calcutta, he wants one thing: Baby Girl? How young is Baby Girl? Do her parents know? Is one of these men her father? Was she sold by her brother? Is this the fate that lies in wait for all the street kids that flock around your legs wher­ever you go through the day? I think back to my three daughters. Everybody that I have ever met who has travelled in India tells me what a wonderfully rich, culturally diverse, spir­itually uplifting, life-enhancing place it is. I'm not thinking I'd better phone the police and social services, I'm just thinking, I want to get out of here. Anywhere. Give me the Congo any day, compared to Calcutta at seventeen minutes to midnight.

Then my mind flicks to a different page. Maybe there is no Ba Ba Gaa. She is just a tempting idea, to ready my arousal. To ensnare me behind a dark door with my mind engorged with lust for some prepubescent rape. Then they'll get me on the floor and have every rupee off me, and in their rage at my inad­equate lack of funds chop me to bits and feed me to the stray dogs. (Being Hindu, thus vegetarians, they won't indulge in cannibalism.) Quick thinking is needed. But I've always been crap at that. I climb down out of the rickshaw. No point in trying to run for it; they'd easily outrun me, or I'd fall over a dead dog or sleeping child. I'll have to front them out.

'Look, all I want is to get to the restaurant on Park Street. If

you won't take me, fine. I'll walk.' 1 make to walk away.

'OK, OR. I take you. You get back on rickshaw.'

My decision to climb back on is not based on any sound ratio­nale, just that he has agreed to take me away from confronting this particular here and now. The other three men fade back into the darkness. The rickshaw is yanked around and pulled back out into Mirza Ghalib Street. Ba Ba Gaa will have to wait. I can pretend she doesn't exist. I can pull up my drawbridge and make believe that I'm the island that Donne said didn't exist. The 500 yards or so to Park Street drag by. I've numbed my mind down so as to freeze out the fear, the same way you do to stop yourself from coming when you're shagging. I focus my mind on the memory of the wall paintings in the Moulin Rouge restaurant less than forty-five minutes ago. Toulouse Lautrec-style cancan girls kicking their legs high, revealing gusset and garter. The last thing you expect to see in Calcutta. A whole subcontinent where the sight of any female leg above the ankle is unseen, and here for all its paying customers to view is full frontal gusset. It's a wonder the diners can keep themselves under control.

Park Street. Street lights, even the odd taxi passes by. Safety. I feel like singing 'Downtown' by Petula Clark in celebration. It's only a couple of hundred yards to the Moulin Rouge. He drops his handles. I tumble out.

'You pay me one hundred rupees now, then you go.'

'But you said you'd take me there and back.'

'You give me one hundred rupees now.'

'One hundred rupees is too much. I'm not giving you that.' Which it is. Double what a taxi would cost for the same journey. But while I'm thinking these thoughts, my right hand is fum­bling in my back pocket, trying to peel off a note from the wad so he can't see what I've got on me.

'Here's one hundred rupees.'

'No, no. You give me baksheesh. Two hundred rupees.'

'You're not getting any more.'

'Baksheesh, or get police.'

'Police? What for?'

'Baksheesh now.' I pull another hundred note out my back pocket and hand it to him and walk away.

'Hey mista - baksheesh, baksheesh - this is not enough.'

I keep walking, looking straight ahead but careful to step over the sleeping bodies. I daren't look around, although I can still hear him threatening me with the police. My racist ten­dencies take full rein as I imagine what the police working the night shift in downtown Calcutta are like. As for Ba Ba Gaa, she's long forgotten. My conscience may have been pricked for a few moments, but it has now healed over. Just as yours will.