Radio Gonzo

Regular readers of my inky fingered scribblings will be aware that I spent my boyhood in what was then the British Crown Colony of Hong Kong. My parents were ridiculously, even by the standards of the dog days of the British Empire and, for some reason they seemed to think that if either of their sons listened to pop music that they would end up living a life filled with sex, drugs, and rock and roll, and in all probability by the time they were in their late 50's would be edited some dodgy weekly music magazine. Now, I wonder where they got that idea. So pop music was banned in the Downes household, and – to be quite honest – it didn't really impact on my childhood at all. While in the rest of the world the Sixties were Swinging, in my little colonial backwater the 1930's had never really ended. The Governor went to church each Sunday wearing a uniform that hadn't changed since Kipling's day, complete with a hat sprouting a magnificent crest of ostrich plumes, and further more he did so being driven in a ma