I first met Ray Shulman when we were both in class 1B (what would now be Year 7) at The Portsmouth Technical High School – now Trafalgar School which is opposite the Coach and Horses pub in Hilsea.

In music lessons, the teacher Mr Wassell would get Ray to play violin, which to be honest did not really impress me. However one Science lesson I decided to sit at the back of the class with two “Jack the Lads “ Trev Lovett and Jamie Adams. I got into trouble for talking to them, but my “reward” was being asked if I wanted to go and see Ray Shulman, not play violin. but bass guitar in a band called “The Roadrunners.”

The venue was Eastney Modern School in which Ray’s brother Phil was a teacher. I was totally naïve, and this was the first time I had been to anything more social than an Auntie’s birthday party. I had no cool clothes to wear – it was a toss-up between my school uniform or cricket whites! Fortunately, I had just about time to get to “Squires” in Commercial Road for mum to buy me a Ben Sherman button-down shirt and a black knitted tie.
I managed to refuse the cigarettes Trev and Jamie offered me on the walk from the bus. “What’s up, can’t your body take it?” I remember them daunting. When I got inside the “club’” I could not believe the atmosphere – it was super charged – girls in mini- skirts – and I mean mini -skirts – music so loud it made my ears hurt and a strange smell which I later found out was body odour and girls – girls in mini- skirts and I mean mini- skirts – whoops I have already said that! I was going to an all -boy’s school and was shy as anything with the opposite sex- so when one girl later offered me a cigarette there was no way that I could refuse. Mind you I made myself look a complete idiot by trying to light the filter tip end! But that was the start of my smoking “career” which finally finished on my 21st birthday.

The Roadrunners later became Simon Dupree and the Big Sound and had a top ten hit called “Kites”. Before that they had a minor hit with “I See The Light”. which is featured today. (Ray is playing sometimes on his back!) They then became a prog rock band that were really big in America called “Gentle Giant” (which I spoke about last week) One of my few claims to fame is that when I was 15 years old the Police caught me on my Lambretta Li 150 scooter with Ray on the back when I had not passed my driving test. We were stopped near his house in Eastney Road opposite a club- “The Birdcage”‎. We got away with it –I won’t tell you how as it was highly illegal- but having a rock superstar on the back of my scooter put up my street cred massively.

I had not seen Ray for many years, but we shared some great times and I miss him lots.

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