Leave Farnham around lunchtime – easy drive to London and then it is nose to tail so that instead of arriving nice and ‘first gig’ early we arrive late. Mickey is already there having just popped across from Surrey while John has been stuck in traffic for hours, so he arrives latest. Once you get to the 100 Club you have to back into a tiny courtyard and then park right up against buildings and unload down two flights of steps. At the moment we have two non-carriers of equipment – Ken for obvious reasons and Griff who has hurt his back. We took Griff to an osteopath earlier in the day but his back is still very sore. Realise that a road crew is essential if you are going to go on the road at any age after 40. Sound -check luckily takes very little time and then it is all squeeze into the dressing room till showtime.

Have to say doing your own support is a new concept – but the audience love it. They are all Neil fans anyway so it is like a double helping of all things nice. Again they love the new songs so this frees up Neil’s set list and means he can experiment a little.. Mind you if he does suddenly go into a few bars of ‘Urban Spaceman’ a tremendous cheer goes up. Neil has to do a one-man show today because Tom has a gig with one of his other bands –‘Big Strides’ but he will be back tomorrow and for the rest of the tour. New songs like ‘One of Those People’ and ‘Evening sun’ take on another dimension with drums and double bass.

A twenty minute break while Neil gets into Rutles mode and I sell CDs. Lovely people telling me how long they have been fans – 37years in one case which goes almost as far back as the first Bonzo gigs in places like The Duragon Arms in South London when the show was about upsetting as many people as they could with explosions, farts, belches – very avant-garde in those days. The explosions were set off in metal containers and deafening. If you did that now you would probably be sued, but then this sort of anarchy was in its infancy. Later bands like The Who were to take this gentle anarchy up to a new level – destroying guitars, amplifiers and themselves in a the sort of frenzied ‘anti-establishment’ scream. Off stage they threw big parties – I remember ‘fantasy’ areas in Keith and Kim Moon’s garden with wheel barrows full of strawberries and churns full of cream and a car being driven into the swimming pool. It was all part of the sixties dream. It was magic land. The real world, of children and mortgages and bent promoters and record companies, into which we were to emerge a few years later; was then only a hazy cloud on the horizon.

But back to the Bonzos – far from being upset about perforated eardrums and spilt drinks, people loved the show – vulgarity and all. After a couple of hours, the Bonzos would pass a hat round till they had enough money to buy drinks. People always gave generously – hmmm,,,, might revive the hat trick.

And now on to the stage come Neil and the Rutles- John, Mickey, Griff; JJ and Ken. They have had almost no run- through but there is something about those songs which carries the musicians along. From ‘Major Happy’ right through to ‘Shangri-La’ and ‘Grandad’ the musicians enjoy being together again and the audience loves it. Three encores and then signing and finally the ritual of the packing of instruments and the loading of van and the journeys back to Surrey, Suffolk and Cambridge in order to save on hotels in London. Ken’s comment once home, ‘I’VE SURVIVED’.