Enrico and his whistling ferrets

January 14, 2009 – 12:35 pm

It seems this week is the week for waving goodbye to Mostonian tradition and now the end of the road from a Mostonian legend. First of all the closing of the Gravel Pit , the streets where I used to live and hang around are being torn down and now the farewell concert this coming Saturday night of Enrico and the Whistling Ferrets.

Enrico Bradshaw was born in 1937. The son of a Trumpyweed farmer Enrico shown, from as young as the age of two, that he had a talent for music. Able to play the jug, comb and paper and bass kazoo before he attended school he was soon picked for the local band. After a succession of tryouts on guitar, triangle, drums, violin and piano he eventually found his forte at age fifteen when he got to grips with an accordion. It was a marriage made in heaven as he began belting out Irish folk music and his favoured polka music. It would be two years on this instrument before his life and the face of music would change forever.

In 1957 Enrico was listening to his radio and heard Elvis Presley’s ‘Jailhouse Rock’. He wept. This was what he was striving for with the accordion. Rock Polka. A raw edged, driven sound that would appeal to the rebellious youth of the day. He formed a backing band and called it ‘The Whistling Ferrets’. The stage was now set for fifty years of musical greatness.

A stream of hits followed including ‘Shake that moneymaker polka’, ‘My love has only one tooth’, ‘Witch burning polka’, ‘One legged waltz’ and the raunchy “Bend down, grab your ankles and smile’. But still after seven albums, twenty three singles and twelve number ones Enrico felt something was missing.

Jump a few years to 1967. During a practice Pete Grimwade but his foot through a speaker cabinet, ripping the cone. Soldiering on Pete played this new riff he had come up with. Through the speaker came this awesome, mean, heavy sound. Heavy Polka was born soon to be imitated in a more popular form in heavy rock. A lot of the heavy rock bands remade or emulated the majority of Enrico’s classic anthems.

• War Chicks became War Pigs (Black Sabbath)
• Half Bricks became Four Sticks (Led Zep)
• You Can See My Piles became I Can See For Miles (The Who)
• The Riders Name Is Norm became Riders On The Storm (Doors)
• Woman From Harpurhey became Woman From Tokyo (Deep Purple)

Many more examples can be found. A succession of fantasic Rock Polka albums followed and sellout tours ensued.

Over the years he again and again broke new frontiers in Rock Polka, bringing forth new genres. Metal Polka, Big Hair Polka, Grunge Polka and now at their peak finishing off with the style that gave Enrico to a new audience, Death Thrash Metal Polka.

The last album ‘Smutty Death’ was their biggest selling album and with the smash cult hit ‘You can’t smoke peas’ it is regarded as the best of the complete back catalogue.

So come Saturday night I’ll be there, complete with backstage pass (it entitles me to a hot pot supper) to see the end of another era.

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Cloning…The Facts

January 12, 2009 – 6:18 pm

“Human cloning has been a scientific fact in Britain for the last 15 years. Against all the rulings put forward by the regularatory bodies Professor Whitner Bissel, Chief Geneticist at Manchester University succeeded in cloning a perfect replica of his son fifteen years ago. He now faces disgrace and because of the tragic way in which the cloning came to light he now faces a police record. In 1987 Professor Bissels 17 year old son Jason, was tragically killed in a motorcycle accident on a stretch of road called the Snake Pass above the Moors of Manchester. The tragedy split apart Professor Bissel and his wife. She left to start a new life in Canada whilst Bissel himself threw himself into his work. His groundbreaking research into somatic cell nuclear transfer (SCNT) brought about what we now know as reproductive cloning a good five years before any other genetecist published any papers. Reproductive cloning is a technology used to generate an animal that has the same nuclear DNA as another currently or previously existing animal. Dolly the sheep was created by reproductive cloning technology. In “somatic cell nuclear transfer” , scientists transfer genetic material from the nucleus of a donor adult cell to an egg whose nucleus, and thus its genetic material, has been removed. The reconstructed egg containing the DNA from a donor cell must be treated with chemicals or electric current in order to stimulate cell division. Once the cloned embryo reaches a suitable stage, it is transferred to the uterus of a female host where it continues to develop until birth. Dolly or any other animal created using nuclear transfer technology is truly an identical clone of the donor animal. Some of the clone’s genetic materials come from the mitochondria in the cytoplasm of the enucleated egg. Mitochondria, which are organelles that serve as power sources to the cell, contain their own short segments of DNA, although this is only 0.01% of the total DNA. Acquired mutations in mitochondrial DNA are believed to play an important role in the growing process. Professor Bissel did the unthinkable and without going before any scientific bodies to gain approval for what he was about to do he played God. Using stored genetic material of his own son he began to clone an exact replica of Jason. He also used a process that has been postulated for the last ten years by the leading team of geneticists at John Hopkins University. He applied a regular low voltage shock to the cells to accellerate growth. In fact from single cell to full term baby the usual natural nine month process took barely four weeks. Of course with accelerated growth of any kind of cellular organism you can expect some kind of side effect that will badly effect that organism. In this case it caused an effect similar to Tourettes Syndrome. This was not obvious at first s the newborn child did not show these effects till later. Using the story that he was looking after the child because it’s mother (he told people his sister) had died in childbirth and he was going to bring him up as though he was his own. He named the child Jason which those around him thought odd, even more so when they noticed he was the double of the Professors dead son. He self tought the child and even used hypnotherapy to implant false memories that would have belonged to the original Jason.Whether these false memories were the trigger for the Tourettes we will never know but it is around this time that the symptoms of the syndrome began to come to light. It seems from police investigations that friends and neighbours had a tough time. This child, through to it’s untimely death, caused nothing but problems for everyone. Jason would think nothing of making lewd gestures and comments to women and young girls. He went out of his way to pick fights with boys, young men and even adults. It was not uncommon for him to bare his buttocks to passers by or to reveal his genitals in public. The complaints to the Professor were coming in thick and fast. At first he thought he could handle Jasons predilictions but as the behaviour got worse and friends and neighbours were turning up on his doorstep angrily complaining he knew he was fighting a losing battle and this clone of his son had turned into a monster. Telling Jason that he was taking him on an educational trip they set off for Blackpool on the North West of England coast. Under the premise of seeing if they could se the irish coastline they went to the top of the seaside resorts famouse tower. Standing 158 metres tall it is a landmark that can be seen for miles. Bissel waited for the viewing platform to clear then forcibly pushed Jason over the edge who then plummeted to his doom. Unfortunately this had been caught on CCTV and Bissel was promptly arrested. He would not say who the liquidised mass on the pavement was nor his rreasons why. Forensics pieced together the teeth and jaw and made the discovery from dental records that they were his sons dental records. He had no choice now but to admit what had happened, how and why. The police were flabbergasted to say the least. They were aso in a predicament. With what could they charge this man with. The son had died in an accident years earlier. There were no records of this Jasons existence. No birth certificates, no school or medical records. Theoretically he didn’t exist but they had to show that the law was being enforced. A lot of judicial wrangling went on and eventually a charge was placed on the Professor befitting of the crime. He appears at Manchester Crown Court next week charged with making an obscene clone fall.”

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A big Hi!!

January 7, 2009 – 2:32 pm

Welcome to Manchesterradioonline.com and to my blog. Keep coming back I’ll be posting all sorts of stuff to cheer, to entertain and to think about. See ya soon.

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