This article was inspired by a cartoon from the Daily Mirror that we reprinted in our 'Where Are They Now?' series which showed a man writing the name 'Dave Smith' on a wall and a policeman asking 'What's your name then?' Dave Smith is a former Barrow player of course, and so is Neil Young come to that, but he has nothing to do with this particularly story. Anyway, it will all become clearer as you read...
The NEIL YOUN STORY
The copper's question needn't necessarily be as daft as it first appears. For it reminds me of an incident from many years ago when those involved - myself, G'EB!'s Columnist With No Name and our friend Panner Rushton (so called because his excuse for not coming out one evening was "I can't... I'm watching 'Panorama' tonight.") - were but mere teenagers. Back then, we were all keen Neil Young fans and the way I remember it, the three of us were sitting around in our future Columnist's front room listening to 'After The Goldrush' when stirred by a rendering of 'Southern Man' at a decibel level no doubt detrimental to both our hearing and the mental health of the neighbours, our pseudonymic scribe decided to show his appreciation by going out and writing the name of our hero in big chalk letters on the wall of the school nearby. Well, it's dark and there's no-one about, but just as he's finishing the 'N' in 'Young', this old bloke out walking his dog suddenly appears out of nowhere demanding... "What do you think you're doing?" Now there's not really much you can say to that, so the anonymous one comes clean. "Writing on this wall!" "And what's your name?" A long pause, and then inspiration… "Neil Young." This of course was the cue for both Panner and myself to go from stunned silence to vainly suppressed giggling and hilarity. But the best was to follow... "Where do you live, Neil?" "Er, round the corner," says 'Neil' who then proceeds to give busybody here the address of the class swot who everybody picked on and nobody liked. "Well, I think you'd better go home and get something to clean it up." And with that, we were off. I don't know how long the bloke waited for us to return, but we never got the cleaning materials of course and as far as I can recall 'Neil Youn' remained on the wall for quite a time. So there you go. It may well not be Dave in the cartoon after all, just a particularly devoted fan. You never know! It also shows that our Columnist With No Name has had a talent for anonymity from an early age. Originally appeared as 'Where Are They Now' in issue 019 - April 1994