RONALD AND ELVIS
Jamie Appiah is my best friend. He's the best friend I'll ever have. His brother Martin was my mate, but when he moved away with his missus, I was devastated. Martin asked me to visit him and I did on a few occasions and I did. We had some great nights out, followed by fantastic English breakfasts to cure our hangovers and soak up the booze. Those weekends we're a joy and full of fun. I missed him so much, but he was happy. If anybody deserved it, Martin did.
Jamie joined Diamonds as soon Martin left. I tried to charm him, but he seemed to think I was weird.
One day after we had locked up, I invited him for a pint. He agreed, grudgingly. It was tense at first, but as the Grolsh went down, we started to talk about rap and our love for Spurs. We had found common ground. We talked about Mobb Deep and recited lyrics to each other.
'You know your shit!' he laughed grabbing his pint. It clicked in my head I had finally earned his respect.
As the beer flowed, Jamie opened up. He told me that he was in awe of his brother Martin and that he had been hanging around with a bad crowd. His best mate, a deejay had been stabbed badly in a nightclub brawl. Jamie had been warned by some gangsters, that he too would meet a gruesome end on behalf of some ill directed retribution. Jamie wanted no part and had got a respectable job to remove himself from what he saw as a downward spiral into violence and crime. From then on I saw Jamie’s life change out of all recognition and for the better.
We hung out constantly and we always had fun. I had a new best mate. He saw me as something pure and as an escape from hanging out with violent arseholes.
On weekends and evenings we went out to pubs and clubs. Jamie was very confident with girls and he bared his chest and thick gold chain at any opportunity. If the sun came out he'd whip his shirt off for the benefit of the surrounding ladies and flex his muscles. I would mock his chain and over confidence.
'I PITTY THE FOOL!' I would yell in a silly African American accent, trying to sound like Mr T.
'Fuck you bruv. You're such a racist! No need to act jealous because you’re pasty and white,' Jamie would retort smirking. He was very proud of his gold chain. It was his pride and joy...And why not. He looked good wearing it.
The greatest joy that Jamie had was his car. I'm not a car type of guy, but it was beautiful. I loved it. It was a second hand BMW that had been reconditioned. Jamie was incredibly proud of automobile and he put a fucking wicked, big booming sound system in it. He would turn up on days off or evenings and we would cruise around, smoking weed and listening to our favourite rap tracks. Jamie had a strange way of categorising rap tracks. We would rap along to our favourite tracks and collaborate, each taking separate verses. Sometimes we had 'solo' tracks. Jamie would call mine white boy tracks. I had two songs. The first was Lordz of Brooklyn 'Tails from the rails'. The second was Cypress Hill 'Ain't going out like that'. Jamie had two solo tracks also. The first was DMX 'Bring your whole crew' and the second was Noreaga 'Super thug'.
The sound system in his car was outstanding. You cannot beat a good sound system. You cannot beat having a friend like Jamie.
The best thing about Jamie was his skill at impersonating people. He was the master at doing it public. If an old woman laughed or coughed at a bus stop, Jamie would be in like a shot. Doing the impression, sometimes in front of the person he was mimicking. He would do it at such random times that it would always catch you by surprise and be even funnier because of it.
I used to rib him that he should go to a drama school.
'There’s a space for you at Silvia Young Drama School. Better grab your ballet shoes,' I chided him.
'Nobodies a bigger drama queen then you bruv,' he’d reply. He was right.
Me and Jamie also had a way of using words and phrases we would coin. We knew what the meaning was and others caught on. Whenever we saw an overly camp or gay man, one of us would murmur 'Tony Starks'. Tony Starks was the real name of the super hero 'Iron Man'. 'An Iron' was cockney rhyming slang for homosexual.
One phrase we coined was 'Dirty twenty to one' which was taken from the Anthony Burgess novel 'A Clockwork Orange'.
Jamie was bemused as to why I loved that book so much. It was something I could never explain. I loved the film, sure, but the book was a beautiful piece of work. I didn't read many books, I never really had any time for reading. There were always better things to do back then. Jamie would laugh when I quoted parts of the novels dialogue.
'SHARPEN YOU UP AND GET YOU READY FOR A BIT OF THE OLD DIRTY TWENTY TO ONE,' I would yell in his car whilst cruising around. I had remembered that line from an old documentary I had seen on television late one night. They played a sound bite of Burgess saying that exact line. It stained my memory.
'What the fuck does Dirty twenty to one even mean?' Jamie blurted out.
'It means violence, it means gang war, it means.... Fucking people up, get it?' I said, trying to find the descriptive words to make the phrase make sense.
'Yeah, I get it. Viddy well little brother. Viddy well,' he said with a big smirk.
From then on that was it. If we were watching a boxing fight it was 'Dirty twenty to one'. If we saw something kick off in a bar or pub, someone would shout 'DIRTY TWENTY TO ONE!'
Cruising around in his car was always fun. The cruising was great while it lasted. The one thing I do regret is getting Jamie into heavy drinking. Jamie flogged his BMW a couple of years later as it spent too much time parked, rather than getting used. I felt bad. But he assured me that he wanted to down scale and buy a motorbike. The running cost of the car was swallowing up his cash. Those days rapping along to